The Remains of the Day

Reviews

“A dream of a book: a beguiling comedy of manners that evolves almost magically into a profound and heart-rending study of personality, class and culture.” —The New York Times Book Review
 
“Marvellous. . . . Superb.” —The Globe and Mail
 
“This is a work that goes to the heart of a lost life. Beautifully composed, totally unsentimental, immeasurably tender.” —The Observer

“A virtuoso performance . . . put on with dazzling daring and aplomb.” —The New York Review of Books
 
“As strong as it is delicate, a very finely nuanced and at times humorous study of repression.” —The Times Literary Supplement
 
“By any definition, The Remains of the Day is a great book. . . . Ishiguro is a master.” —Ottawa Citizen
 
“A triumph. . . . Ishiguro’s creative control . . . never falters. This wholly convincing portrait of a human life unweaving before your eyes is inventive and absorbing, and by turns funny, absurd and ultimately very moving.” —The Sunday Times
 
“Brilliant and quietly devastating.” —Newsweek
 
“One of the best books of the decade.” —The Boston Globe
 
“Suspenseful, intriguing, elegiac and politically astute. . . . Both subtle and humane. . . . Simply read it for pleasure, and be richly rewarded.” —The Guardian
 
“An ineffably sad and beautiful piece of work—a tragedy in the form of a comedy of manners.” —Chicago Tribune
 
“Ishiguro writes a flowing, curiously timeless and placeless English. . . . The quietude is seductive, and matches the kindness of this book.” —Vogue
 
“Full of music from a past that, through nuance and innuendo, is slenderly poisoned, turning wit and perfectly timed farce into a political ghost story. . . . Ishiguro has become one of the finest prose stylists of our time.” —Michael Ondaatje
 
“A diamond of a book, perfectly cut, with splendid and uncountable facets, deceptively modest.” —John le Carré
 
“A remarkable, strange and moving book.” —Sebastian Faulks, The Independent
 
“There is nobody writing in Britain today who quite resembles [Ishiguro]. In a fictional landscape babbling with psychodrama and magical realism, this restrained and sensitive voice falls like a balm.” —Colin Thubron, The Sunday Times
 
“The novel rests firmly on the narrative sophistication and flawless control of tone ... of a most impressive novelist.” —Julian Barnes, The Literary Review Expand reviews