Read it in the Green Room
The Remains of the Day
- paceSlow-moving rumination
- writingControlled, ironic voice
- settingDarlington Hall, 1956
An English butler takes a drive through the West Country in 1956 and looks back on a lifetime of service at Darlington Hall. A classic of unreliable self-deception and restraint, for readers who like what is left unsaid.
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The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Green Room
Backstage of The Remains of the Day.
Walk in mid-chapter. The people of the book are there, as themselves, knowing what they know so far — and nothing else. Ask them anything. They have read exactly as far as you have.
A moment in the Green Room
The Remains of the Day · Kazuo Ishiguro
The narrator
Of The Remains of the Day, as they are at your reading place
You
What happens next?
The narrator
“I can only tell you what you have read. Past your page there is nothing yet — not for you, and not for me. Turn it, and come back.”
Their knowledge stops where your reading does.
Who is in the room
Anyone who has walked on by your page.
The cast
Any character who has appeared so far. Someone who hasn’t walked on yet isn’t in the room. That’s not a limitation; that’s the point.
The narrator
The voice telling you the story, as far as it has told it.
The author
As the book presents them — the mind behind the pages you have read, not a biography.
The book itself
Ask what it is doing to you so far. It answers from its own pages, up to yours.
Before you go in
What critics and prize juries said.
Editorial synthesis
The New York Times review, excerpted on Book Marks, called it a dream of a book and praised the author's command of the butler's corseted idiom. Kirkus Reviews in 1989 respected the convincing voice and the carefully bleached prose but doubted the effort to win sympathy for the narrator. Reviews agree on the voice's control and the slow reveal beneath it.
Drawn from Kirkus Reviews, The New York Times (via Book Marks).
Recognition
- WinnerBooker Prize 1989
How it stays unspoiled
Nothing past your page exists.
The companion is assembled from the passages you have read and only those. A character who knows the ending is no one worth talking to, so there is no override — not behind a setting, not behind a confirmation. Your position is the wall.
Get the book
One ebook. Yours.
US$12.99ebook · eBooks.com
Buy the ebook once, read it in Green Room — or in any reader you already use.
Get the ebook at eBooks.comReading, narration and Green Room compatibility not yet verified for the retailer edition.
The cast has been waiting for you.
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