Shabbat Reading: Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day

#whatireadovershabbat Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day (1989; Everyman's Library, 2012)

An aging butler goes for a trip in the west of England in 1956. Along the way he takes stock of his life and finds a wealth of regrets. Simple in plot, The Remains of the Day is a masterfully told, devastating story, gradually spooling out the details of a moral collapse. My only criticism is of a slight smugness about the danger of authority. It’s easy to look down on Stevens because he abdicates so much in the face of such obvious evil. Things aren’t usually so simple.