The Remains Of The Day: Kazuo Ishiguro

[poliphilo]

I don't hate this book- it's quite good fun (like a Python sketch about stuffy Englishmen with most of the nonsense extracted) but:

The irony is so heavy-handed

And Stevens is such a straw man

And God only knows what Miss Kenton is supposed to see in him.

The film solves the problem by casting Tony Hopkins in the central role. He deepens the angst, lightens the absurdity and generally pulls the character into shape.

After three books by Hardy Ishiguro seems so light-weight.

Comments

Kazuo Ishiguro

[zephyrcrow.livejournal.com]

Hey there. I've been away for a long time, so I stopped by to say hello, and read back a few entries--

I generally think Hopkins adds gravitas to any role, as shown in his take on the cartoonish villainy of Lecter. I have yet to see Remains (because I'm working through all of Ishiguro's books slowly, and I'm not there yet), but I highly anticipate it already.

I did read several Ishiguro bits I liked. Some short and some long. Let me pull up my Goodreads and figure this out. Okay, so he did two books I liked. An Artist of the Floating World centers around an aging man looking back on his life, in WWII and post-war. I'm hazy on the details, since I read it a while ago, but I remember it being a somewhat nostalgic, emotional read, if a bit slow.
The other one, and this is the one I am *excited* to mention, is Never Let Me Go. This book is probably one of my top 20 favorite novels ever. All that you need to know is that there are students at a private school in England, who grow up there without families from childhood, and as they get older, they learn that they have a life "purpose" that is separate from other people and special. I was fooled by the idyllic tone in the beginning, lulled into thinking it was going to be a certain kind of book, and was very mistaken. Avoid spoilers. (The movie's okay.)
The short thing I wanted to recommend, also, is "A Family Supper," a story about eating fugu. It's a really masterful use of tension in a story, and I like the ending.
http://www.redwoods.edu/departments/english/instructors/Holper/English1B/A%20Family%20Supper.rtf

[zephyrcrow.livejournal.com]

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