The Remains of the Day Review

Stevens's professionalism is admirable and tragic because it gives him language for avoiding every personal judgment he fears. The person on the page is allowed to be inconsistent about duty, which made the choices easier to trust. I was most attentive during the subtext with Miss Kenton and the gradual collapse of Stevens's self-justifying narrative. The attention paid to the subtext with Miss Kenton gives the larger question of duty a human scale.

For me, the real argument concerns duty and dignity. The plot matters because it forces duty and dignity into practical choices, where a clean belief becomes harder to maintain.

I did lose confidence when the restraint may feel too cool for some readers, and the political history remains indirect. A little more patience would have made the material around duty easier to believe.

I found myself rereading the section around the subtext with Miss Kenton, because it changes the emotional meaning of duty without announcing the change.

The book works better as a study of duty than as a perfectly balanced plot. The subtext with Miss Kenton is the part I remember first.