Author: David Hebblethwaite

Recommended reading: short stories

20th June 2012 / / 3 Comments

Today is International Short Story Day, so I thought I’d bring some short stories to the blog. Here is a list of links to some of the short stories available online that I’ve enjoyed in the last few years:

***

I also asked for other people’s recommendations on Twitter last night, and here’s what they said:

@ActuallyAisha recommended the Caine Prize shortlist, especially Rotimi Babatunde’s “Bombay’s Republic” [PDF link].

@bellaserval recommended Joel Golby’s “And the Dead Came Back to Life”.

@T_A_Fletcher recommended Paraxis.

@nikeshshukla recommended www.theshortstory.org.uk.

@beaglelover7 recommended Suffolk Book League‘s New Beginnings anthology [PDF link].

@GigiWoolf recommended Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”.

@MandyBoat recommended the Bloomsbury Short Stories sampler.

@kevmcveigh recommended Lewis Shiner’s stories.

@JinxedJester recommended George Saunders’ “Adams” [podcast]

***

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions, and I hope you’ll find plenty to enjoy amongst these stories.

Jonathan Lee, Joy (2012)

16th June 2012 / / 7 Comments

Joy Stephens would appear to have everything to live for – she’s a successful City lawyer, about to be made a partner at the age of 33 – but she is planning to commit suicide before the day is out. When we first meet her, we get an insight into the sorts of fractures that riddle Joy’s ostensibly perfect life, as she arrives home in the early hours to find Dennis, her husband of five years, with the couple’s regular Thursday-night call girl, whom Dennis was supposed to cancel this week.

It soon becomes clear that Joy fell from the platform at that evening’s ceremony announcing her promotion, and now lies in a coma. The novel alternates between chapters following Joy through her final day, and the first-person interviews given to the law firm’s counsellor by four other characters: Joy’s colleague Peter; her academic husband, Dennis; personal trainer Samir; and Joy’s PA, Barbara.

Joy is Jonathan Lee’s second novel (following 2010’s Who Is Mr Satoshi?), and it’s a quite superb piece of work. Take the characterisation, for example: Lee uses four first-person voices, and sharply differentiates them all; their respective owners come right off the page (as does Joy herself). Moreover, though they may seem easy enough to categorise at first, all the main characters reveal a subtle complexity as the novel goes on: Dennis may come across as just a long-winded eccentric, but his reaction to Joy’s fall suggests a steelier side; Barbara may be an unpleasant gossip-monger, but we also see how she has been frustrated by circumstance. Even the loathsome Peter, who has very few redeeming qualities, elicits a certain amount of empathy as Lee portrays a man who found his niche and then has it taken away.

Lee’s book is also simply a great pleasure to read: its prose is a finely-tuned instrument, discursive and sharp by turns, but always with an irresistible flow. Its plot takes unexpected turns which undermine some of the assumptions one has likely been forming about what is going to happen and why. As a result, the pages turn ever more furiously, no matter how much the ending is supposedly pre-ordained.

Perhaps more than anything else, Joy strikes me as a novel about ambition, finding a place in life, and dealing with what happens when that place proves unstable. So, Joy has achieved success, but not without sacrifice; and now various factors combine to make her question whether everything has been worth it. Peter might be said to have played the career game more cannily than Joy, but even he is insufficiently prepared when life moves on. Samir has tried to make something of himself, but ends up caught in his own ritualistic behaviour patterns. The book’s title becomes a pun, as joy proves a quality as elusive (though nonetheless glimpsed occasionally) as Joy the person is to the other characters considering her personality. But the strengths of Joy the novel are far from elusive, and this fascinating patchwork character study signals that Jonathan Lee is a name to follow.

Elsewhere
Jonathan Lee’s website
Some other reviews of Joy: Bookish Magpie; Alex Aldridge for the Guardian (with interview).

How to approach a new genre

13th June 2012 / / 7 Comments

How do you begin to explore a new area of fiction? Asking for recommendations is obviously a good idea, but that may not be as straightforward as it seems. Over at Savidge Reads, Simon is asking where he should start with reading Terry Pratchett; it strikes me that, with a writer whose work presents so many different faces to the world, there can’t be a single definitive recommendation for everybody. It depends on what you like to read – and the same goes for unfamiliar genres.

I’ve been reflecting on how I came to appreciate types of fiction that I hadn’t previously – even types of fiction that I thought I couldn’t appreciate – and thought I would share the process. I’ll use a hypothetical example based on what I read most often: how readers of ‘literary’ contemporary fiction might go about approaching science fiction. I’ll also talk about my own main reading evolution, which essentially went in the opposite direction.

Stage 1: the same, but different

To my mind, the best first step in approaching an unfamiliar genre is to choose something which belongs to the category of what you’d already read – but which can also be read as what you’re working towards. It’s then a question of viewing the book in that different light. For our hypothetical readers of mainstream literary fiction, Far North by Marcel Theroux would be a fine starting-point: that book wasn’t published as science fiction; as Theroux commented on its being nominated for the Clarke Award, it wasn’t written as sf, either; but it can certainly be read as such – not just because Far North is set in the future, but also for the sense of estrangement and disorientation which Theroux creates, for example. Recognising these qualities, our readers may begin to see aspects of science fiction in work they already enjoy.

In my case, it was reading books like Christopher Priest’s The Prestige – alongside the Clute-Grant Encyclopedia of Fantasy, which inspired me to take a more critical, reflective approach to my reading – that made me start to value depth of craft in a book, even though it would be several more years before I realised as much.

Stage 2: exploration

As you move further into a new genre, it’s a question of finding the qualities you like and admire in the unfamiliar fiction. In our hypothetical example, our readers might now be turning to the likes of Geoff Ryman, Octavia Butler, Adam Roberts, Gwyneth Jones, Joanna Russ… authors, in other words, who unequivocally write science fiction, but who do so with sensibilities our readers may recognise.

Dan Rhodes’s Gold would have been one of the first books I read which made me realise that mainstream fiction could give me some of the same things I valued in speculative fiction. In a very real sense, nothing happens in Gold, and that would have turned me off it at one time; but I loved it – it was quirky, wonderfully written, and insightful. Right up to books like Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal and David Vann’s Legend of a Suicide, I’ve been able to build bridges between my old reading heartland and less familiar territory.

Stage 3: other aesthetics

From seeing similar qualities in different kinds of fiction, I think there’s one more stage, which involves recognising the value of different but equally worthwhile approaches. For our hypothetical readers, this might mean a book like Evolution by Stephen Baxter; this novel follows a single strand of DNA through evolutionary time, and hence transcends character, plot, and some other characteristics we might normally look for in fiction. But the episodic structure of the narrative could be said to mirror the process of evolution itself; so Baxter’s strategies work aesthetically for this particular book, even if they might not for many others.

I’m not talking here about a journey towards the ‘best’ or the ‘most difficult’ of a given genre; but towards whatever is furthest away from what a reader would normally appreciate – and that, of course, will be different for each of us. There was a time when I wouldn’t have contemplated reading a book like Agnes Grey, for instance; but not only have I now done so, I’ve also been able to approach it on its own terms and get something from it.

Of course, this is not a recipe for being able to appreciate everything – that’s not going to be possible, and it’s probably not desirable, either – but it’s how I expanded my reading palette. Do you have any approaches of your own?

Book notes: coming of age in Texas… and a history of sweets

10th June 2012 / / 3 Comments

Tom Wright, What Dies in Summer (2012)

Tom Wright’s debut novel chronicles one summer in the life of Jim Bonham, who lives in Texas with his grandmother (having been estranged from his mother and her current partner, and his father having passed away), and has frequent visions of a dead girl standing by his bed. At the start of the novel, Jim finds his cousinL.A.(Lee Ann)  sitting, shaking on the porch; she becomes part of his and Gram’s household, and what happened to her will be revealed over the coming months. That summer will also see the two teenagers discover a dead body (the girl of Jim’s visions), and Jim learning more about life and himself.

It’s in the latter aspect that What Dies in Summer shines brightest for me. Jim draws a distinction between being intelligent and smart, and comments that L.A. is much smarter than he. We see evidence of this near the beginning, when L.A. verbally outmanoeuvres a stranger who tries to trap her and Jim, when the latter would clearly never have been able to think like that. However, despite his lack of street-wisdom, and despite the fact that L.A. remains largely a closed book to him, Jim does grow and learn through his encounters with both dark and light aspects of life; Wright creates some beautifully judged passages depicting this. Jim’s narration also has a nicely unpolished quality, which really makes it feel like a voice that belongs to its character (something I do like to see in a first-person narrative). All in all, I’d say that Tom Wright is an author to keep an eye on, and What Dies in Summer certainly a debut worth checking out.

Tim Richardson, Sweets: a History of Temptation (2002)

Regular readers of this blog may know I’m partial to a bit of quirky social or cultural history; so much the better if, like Joe Moran’s On Roads, it can reach a little deeper than its immediate subject. Sweets is not on the same level as Moran’s book – perhaps inevitably, given that its subject matter is rather frivolous – but it is fun and interesting.

Tim Richardson takes a broadly chronological approach, with brief asides to focus on particular kinds of sweet. I find the book’s account of the early history of sweets a little dry in places, a little too heavy on detail; more engaging and lively are the anecdotes and insights on contemporary sweets – though the chapter on nineteenth-century confectioners and their ‘benevolent tyranny’ is fascinating. But Richardson’s enthusiasm is apparent throughout; and his closing whistle-stop tour of the world’s sweet cultures leaves me curious to know what some of the products he mentions taste like.

This book fulfils the Cookery, Food and Wine category of the Mixing It Up Challenge 2012.

Book notes: Shaw and Perkins

5th June 2012 / / 3 Comments

Ali Shaw, The Man Who Rained (2012)

After the death of her father (who instilled in her a love of the weather) and subsequent end of her relationship, Elsa Beletti determines to leaveNew York for Thunderstown, a small settlement nestled between four mountains, which she has previously seen only from an aeroplane window. The people of Thunderstown have their superstitions about the weather, and not necessarily without good reason; but nothing prepares Elsa for meeting Finn Munro, a local hermit who transforms into a raincloud. Elsa finds herself falling in love with Finn, but there are those in Thunderstown who fear him to be the folk-devil Old Man Thunder.

I’ve heard Ali Shaw’s name mentioned a lot in the last couple of years – enough to suggest that his first book, The Girl With Glass Feet, was a modern fairytale which marked the emergence of a significant writer. Now that I’ve read Shaw’s sophomore novel, I find myself wanting to read the debut for comparison, because The Man Who Rained has some wonderful qualities – but it doesn’t quite get to where I sense it could be.

Any tale like this needs a sense of magic to emerge from its words, and The Man Who Rained has that, especially when it’s focusing on Finn – for instance, the passage describing his birth is beautiful. But the impact of this is diluted by the novel’s approach to place: both New York and Thunderstown are depicted rather sketchily, so there’s no sense of moving from the mundane world to somewhere extraordinary.

In terms of characterisation, there’s a nice parallel/contrast between Elsa’s and Daniel Fossiter’s (Thunderstown’s resident ‘culler’, who was close to Finn’s mother) thoughts about their respective fathers. But the ending of The Man Who Rained doesn’t quite satisfy – it doesn’t come out of nowhere, but there is a sense of a story in a hurry to be wrapped up. Be that as it may, I certainly enjoyed Shaw’s book, and I’ll be keeping an eye on his future work – as well as reading The Girl With Glass Feet, of course.

Emily Perkins, The Forrests (2012)

The Forrests is one of the first titles in Bloomsbury’s new literary fiction imprint, Bloomsbury Circus. Now, I have a soft spot for well-designed physical books, and I must say that the Circus volumes are gorgeous – substantial (but not unwieldy) paperbacks that stand out on shelves. Of course, what’s between the covers counts the most; so that’s what I’ll turn to now.

Emily Perkins’s fourth novel is concerned particularly with the life of Dorothy Forrest, who, aged seven, moves from New York to Auckland with her parents and siblings. Over the years, relationships begin, evolve and end; life takes both unexpected and only-too-expected turns. Perkins’s writing is elliptical, in terms of the chronological leaps between chapters, and the way plot developments are often revealed indirectly within the text. There’s also a focus on fine (sometimes apparently extraneous) detail; these techniques lend the novel an epic sweep, enabling Perkins to reveal the drama inherent in an ‘ordinary’ life when it’s viewed in the long term.

By the same token, all the detail means that The Forrests doesn’t always flow as well as it might; some passages and chapters are inevitably more engaging than others. But then along comes a particular phrase, or a moment of observation, and all is well once more. When reading Perkins’s novel, like Dorothy Forrest herself, we become caught up in the whirlwind of life.

May wrap-up

2nd June 2012 / / 0 Comments

Book of the Month

At the start of May, we found out which novel won this year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award, and my favourite read of the month was a previous Clarke shortlistee – Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan Army. Already I have plans for the next book of Hall’s I’m going to read; there won’t be a review of it, but something else. More on that in a few weeks…

Reviews

Features

Book notes: Baxter and Alrawi

1st June 2012 / / 4 Comments

Greg Baxter, The Apartment (2012)

The narrator of Greg Baxter’s first novel is an unidentified American living in the capital of an unidentified European country, on his way to view an apartment, accompanied by Saskia, a young woman he has befriended whilst in the city. There’s also a sense in which he’s trying to leave the past behind, and searching for something deeper than a place to live – stability, perhaps; or the chance to control his own world, even if that amounts to little more than being able to fade into the background.

The Apartment is told as one continuous utterance – no chapters, no scene breaks; this has the effect of melding past and present, the most mundane details of life and the most exceptional experiences. Everything becomes an aspect of the whole, whether it’s a memory of life in the US, a digression on billiards or architecture, or an encounter with an inhabitant of the city. Nevertheless, there are strongly contrasting textures in the novel: The protagonist was in Iraq (firstly in the Navy, then privately); the passages depicting what happened to him there have a certain mistiness about them that plays against the precise detail of the present-day sequences – though that precision is itself undercut to an extent by the lack of geographical specifics.

Baxter’s novel is also peppered with striking observations of human behaviour (for example: ‘people here are always reassuring each other that they exist and life exists and the city itself exists by refusing to communicate’). The Apartment is one of those books which finds something remarkable in the fabric of the ordinary.

Mustafa Alrawi, Creating Rachel (2012)

Mustafa Alrawi’s short novel – again, a debut – is narrated by Mohammed, a young man who’s mostly been drifting through life, buoyed up by his privileged background. But, just over a year ago, he met and fell in love with a girl named Rachel – though he still doesn’t seem certain whether his love was ever reciprocated; now, Mohammed looks back over that time, and how knowing Rachel has shaped the person he is now.

Creating Rachel is firmly embedded in Mohammed’s subjectivity – almost too much so, as the reader’s sense of how the protagonist’s actions and attitudes may appear from the outside can be diluted. But an effective uncertainty also comes off the page – uncertainty over how much happened in reality, and how Mohammed really feels about Rachel. He builds an idea (or several) of her in his mind, and we see how doing that changes him; as much as Mohammed might be said to be ‘creating Rachel’, he’s also creating himself.

Fiction Uncovered 2012

24th May 2012 / / 2 Comments

Fiction Uncovered, the initiative to highlight the work of established UK authors who may have fallen off the radar, is back for another year. The 2012 list was revealed on Wednesday; unlike last year, I wasn’t able to attend the announcement, but I was still keen to see which titles had been selected. Here are this year’s books (quotations taken from the Fiction Uncovered website).

Peter Benson, Two Cows and a Vanful of Smoke

What the judges say:  ‘The tease of a title gradually resolves itself as the delightful comedy of drug-running in rural England plays out. The cartel meets Ambridge.’ – John Sutherland, Lord Northcliffe Professor Emeritus of Modern English Literature at UCL; Chair, 2012 Judging Panel

It’s fair to say that I probably wouldn’t have picked this up if I saw it in a bookshop, though the blurb’s suggestion of a supernatural note is intriguing, and I do like the narrative voice in the extract I’ve read. Looking up Benson’s other books, he seems a wide-ranging author, but with a particular focus on landscape, especially that of Somerset. I think he’s a writer I should investigate further.

Cressida Connolly, My Former Heart

What the judges say: ‘A family saga spanning the second half of the twentieth century, this gentle story of women’s lives in Egypt, Lebanon and the London Blitz is at once tender, comic and wise. Following on from the success of her short stories, My Former Heart marks out Connolly as a novelist to watch.’ – Katy Guest, Literary Editor, Independent on Sunday; 2012 Judging Panel

This is a first novel from Connolly, who has previously published a short story collection and a historical biography. Family sagas aren’t generally my thing, and I don’t feel particularly inclined to try My Former Heart; but I think Fiction Uncovered ought to be broad in scope, so as far as I’m concerned, it’s no problem if not everything on the list appeals to me.

Jill Dawson, Lucky Bunny

What the judges say: ‘With sleight of hand, a little rouge and a mind as sharp as a razor, Queenie Dove does battle with all the Depression, the war and her father have to throw at her. Dawson writes with a pace and humour that is infectious and her cast of characters will stay with you long after finishing the book.’ – Jasper Sutcliffe, Head of Buying, Foyles Group; 2012 Judging Panel

The synopsis makes this sound fun – a tale of wartimeEast Endcrime capers – and the extract suggests a novel with a serious heart; that’s a pretty unbeatable combination when it’s done well, so I think I’ll be taking a look at Lucky Bunny.Dawson’s bibliography suggests she’s another writer whose work covers varied ground, which is always a good thing in my book.

Tibor Fischer, Crushed Mexican Spiders

What the judges say: ‘Small minded readers might object that this is not a novel but two exquisitely packaged short stories. But the stories themselves – sardonic and beautifully chiselled – radiate wonderfully.’ – John Sutherland

Here’s something that wasn’t on last year’s Fiction Uncovered list: a book of short stories. (Admittedly there are only two – printed back-to-back – in this 64-page volume, but still.) Tibor Fischer is one of those writers whose name I know without knowing anything about his work; now I’ve looked it up, his fiction sounds just the sort of quirky stuff I enjoy. This collection could be a good place to start.

Doug Johnstone, Hit & Run

What the judges say: ‘The whole panel were impressed with the non-stop energy of Hit & Run. Just when you think his protagonist has no further left to fall, he makes another crazy decision that amps up the suspense to an even greater level.’ – Matt Thorne, writer and Head of Creative Writing at Brunel University; 2012 Judging Panel

I felt that last year’s Fiction Uncovered list missed a trick by not including any ‘genre fiction’, so it’s nice to see titles like My Former Heart and this thriller being selected now. Hit & Run sounds like a book which delivers the goods as a thriller whilst also offering something more substantial in its characterisation; that would be a good combination of attributes.

Susanna Jones, When Nights Were Cold

What the judges say: ‘A delightful adventure full of feisty women, mountaineering, all kinds of escape and Edwardian derring-do, this is narrated by a classic unreliable narrator who looks back on friendships gone catastrophically wrong among the peaks of theAlps. Jones’s fourth novel deserves to put her on the literary map.’ – Katy Guest

I read one of Susanna Jones’s earlier novels, The Earthquake Bird, a couple of years ago, and rather enjoyed it. The contemporary Japanese setting of that book is quite different from the early twentieth-century British and Alpine background of When Night Were Cold – but, as should be clear by now, I like variety in an author’s oeuvre. And I have a soft spot for books with unreliable narrators, so this could be good.

David Park, The Light of Amsterdam

What the judges say: ‘From the problems between fathers and sons to the perils of going to see Dylan in his dotage, this is a deep and richly pleasurable reading experience.  Park depicts the frustrations and excitements of everyday life with equal clarity.’ – Matt Thorne

I first heard of David Park in an article from last year in which various writing and publishing types were asked to name writers they thought deserved more attention (frustratingly, I can’t find the link) – and now here he is on the Fiction Uncovered list. I’d like to read one of his books, but can’t honestly say that the synopsis of The Light of Amsterdam sounds interesting to me; perhaps I’ll try a different Park title.

Dan Rhodes, This Is Life

What the judges say: ‘Using his trademark dark humour Dan Rhodes draws his protagonist Aurélie Renard, and the reader, deep into the heart of the most romantic city in the world, Paris. Rhodes explores art, politics and modern life, with hilarious and enlightening results.’ – Jasper Sutcliffe

Now here’s a writer who I know deserves a wider audience. I’ve read and greatly enjoyed Rhodes’s previous two novels – Gold is especially good – but have heard mixed things about his Paris-set latest, that it might not have the spark of his others. Still, this is Dan Rhodes we’re talking about, and I’d never dismiss one of his books without reading it. I’ll probably read Timoleon Vieta Come Home first, mind.

You can find the Fiction Uncovered titles on display in a bookshop near you.

Elsewhere
Read Simon’s take on the list over at Savidge Reads.

Book notes: Shepherd and Lightfoot

21st May 2012 / / 2 Comments

Lloyd Shepherd, The English Monster (2012)

(NB. I can’t say what I want to say about this book without revealing a key plot development from about a third in; bear that in mind if you read on.)

Lloyd Shepherd’s debut novel takes as its foundation theRatcliffe Highwaymurders, a pair of multiple killings which took place near theLondonarea of Wapping in December 1811. As Shepherd presents them, these gruesome crimes are beyond the comprehension of most people; but John Harriott, magistrate of the Thames River Police, is determined that the culprit will be brought to justice. His watchman-constable, Charles Horton, has an unorthodox technique for fighting crime: the systematic investigation of evidence – ‘detection’, as Harriott calls it.

A parallel storyline begins in 1564, when we join young Billy Ablass as he’s about to set sail fromPlymouthin search of fortune. But the ship he has joined is on a mission to gather slaves, and its voyages lead Billy ultimately toFlorida, where he becomes the victim of a curse – never to die, but always to carry the burden of what he and his crewmates have done, a burden which will rot him from the inside.

As a crime story, The English Monster fairly rattles along; but, in the end, the mystery element comes to seem almost beside the point. What interests me most about the novel is its subtext, which is all about the the emerging modern world. The two narrative threads highlight key historical junctures and the tensions around them: a more ‘scientific’ approach to policing is emerging, but is largely viewed with suspicion; the Wapping docks are growing, but not everyone will experience the economic benefits; a world is being built on the trade of human beings. Against this background, Charles Horton and Billy Ablass could be seen as emblematic opposites: Horton as the positive force for progress, Ablass as the negative aspects of human nature which persist and hold us back.

I understand that Shepherd is planning more novels featuring The English Monster’s characters; the pace and subtext of this first one leave me very keen to see where he goes next.

Frederick Lightfoot, My Name Is E (2011)

Judith Salt, Abigail Sempie and Grace Powers are three deaf girls all born in the same Cumbrian village in 1945. Though unrelated, they meet each other as young children and come to think of themselves as ‘sisters’. Judith’s and Grace’s Grade II deafness is acquired, and they have some ability to speak and hear; but Abby is Grade III deaf from birth, and can utter only the single syllable ‘E’. It’s apparent from the beginning that something happened to Abby, because Judith (our narrator) returned to her home village aged twenty-five, intent on avenging her. Judith tells the intertwined tales of that time, her childhood, and her current life at the age of sixty.

I’m ambivalent about My Name Is E. On the one hand, Frederick Lightfoot creates a vivid portrait of the village community and its precarious social terrain; on the other, I find his prose style a little too dry at times. The mysteries of Abby’s fate and what the twenty-five-year old Judith with do are strong narrative hooks, though the resolution of that latter thread is less effective. I find myself remaining on the fence as far as this book goes.

Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (1989)

17th May 2012 / / 9 Comments

I’ve been thinking back to that Leo Benedictus article on ‘hindered narrators’ which crossed my mind whilst reading The Quiddity of Will Self. In it, Benedictus refers to the previous generation’s idea of ‘a literary novelist: a titan of the typewriter [whose] own voice was all you ever got from them, even when they swathed it in a made-up “I.”’ I’ve often had trouble with that sort of writing myself; I tend to think that a first-person voice should be tailored to the narrator’s character. That was one of the problems I had with Kazuo Ishiguro’s novella collection, Nocturnes – each of its narrators had the same voice, and it was one which didn’t suit all of them.

It was time to try Ishiguro’s work again, and I went for his most lauded novel, The Remains of the Day. I found that same first-person voice here, but its slightly stuffy formality works perfectly for this narrator: Stevens, the butler of Darlington Hall in Oxfordshire, whom we join in July 1956, as he’s preparing to take a drive to the West Country. He’s planning to visit Miss Kenton (now Mrs Benn), a former housekeeper of the Hall, who has written to Stevens after many years, describing how her marriage has foundered and hinting (so Stevens reads into the letter) that she may wish to return to Darlington; Stevens’ pretext for the journey is to discuss the latter with Miss Kenton, because he’s struggling to manage the Hall with the few staff he has left; but there are hints from the beginning (and growing throughout) that there may be a more personal dimension to their relationship than Stevens is willing to admit.

Something else that didn’t sit right with me in Nocturnes was a character who was effectively dismissed completely as a person by a supposed friend, and just accepted it – I simply couldn’t imagine someone in the present day being so yielding about that. Again, I find similar character traits in The Remains of the Day; and, again, they make more sense in this context. Stevens’ life and outlook are defined by service: his job, as he sees it, is to facilitate the work of the gentlemen he serves; the man Stevens might otherwise be himself is subsumed under that notion of duty. To his mind, the most fundamental quality of a great butler (not that he would be so bold as to consider himself ‘great’, you understand) is ‘dignity’ – the capacity to retain one’s composure whatever the situation; not to let one’s inner life become apparent to the outside world. There’s no doubt Stevens has this capacity: the most extreme example is probably when Stevens’ father (who at the time was working under him at Darlington Hall) has a stroke and dies below stairs whilst his son is attending to a conference of dignitaries; Stevens carries on performing his duties, keeps his emotions largely in check, and still feels a small sense of ‘triumph’ thirty years on at being able to maintain his dignity on that occasion.

Stevens’ relationship with Miss Kenton is similarly characterised by such ‘dignity’. Their conversations, as he recalls them, are stiff and rather cold; when she tries to inject some warmth into them, Stevens doesn’t respond to it, and Miss Kenton in her turn becomes barbed and distant in how she deals with Stevens’ professional requests – but, crucially, he can’t now recall whether some criticisms came from Miss Kenton or his old employer, Lord Darlington; this both underlines how Stevens’ work and ‘personal’ life are as one to him, and emphasises the mental filter through which we’re viewing events.

The theme of conflict between private and public life is reflected not just in the person of Stevens, but also in wider life at the Hall. Stevens remarks at one point that important political decisions may influenced at private gatherings in country houses – and it’s such a diplomatic conference that Lord Darlington organises in the 1930s in an attempt to avert war; one delegate warns another in secret that he may be the target of manipulation – and, in an illustration of the social forces at work, this is brought sharply into the public sphere.

But it’s Stevens who is ultimately the focus of Ishiguro’s novel, and we see a man who lacks vital self-awareness. He may be at pains to stress – may believe ardently – that he’s a servant; but his bearing makes it easy enough for some of those he meets on the road to mistake Stevens for a gentleman. He acts well enough like a lord in his own domain; is quite unaware of the effect that can have on others; and takes the view that ‘ordinary people [cannot] be expected to have “strong opinions” on all manner of things’ (p. 204). It’s only gradually that Stevens comes to realise some of his negative qualities, and something of what he may have missed out on in life – and, even then, it’s clear he’s only just beginning. At the start of the novel, Stevens is unsure how to feel about and respond to his new American employer’s banter; by the end, he’s coming to think that banter ‘is not such a foolish thing to indulge in – particularly if it is the case that in bantering lies the key to human warmth’ (p. 258). It’s the first step on a new road for him.

After I’d read the prologue of The Remains of the Day, I was concerned that the novel might be too unsubtle in its depiction of Stevens. Now I see I was approaching the book in the wrong way: what Ishiguro does is take a character who might border on caricature and make a fully-fledged individual of him. So I’ve come to appreciate Ishiguro’s work that bit more with The Remains of the Day; it’ll be Never Let Me Go when I read him next, I think.

Archives

Browse posts by author, original language of book, or post category

© 2025 David's Book World

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑