Emily Temple is the author of The Lightness and the Managing Editor at Literary Hub. She earned her MFA in fiction from the University of Virginia, where she was the recipient of a Henfield Prize. [My Book, The Movie: The Lightness; The Page 69 Test: The Lightness]
At Lit Hub she tagged seven great "love stories for those who basically tolerate love, but have their doubts." One title on the list:
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (1989)Read about another entry on the list.
Is it fair to say that The Remains of the Day is still Ishiguro’s most famous novel? (Just like Stevens, time seems to pass me by…) I think it’s fair to say that it’s his most romantic novel, despite there being very little actual romance, except for the totally unprofessional passions boiling beneath the surface. Nothing ever happens, no matter how much the reader might wish it to, because the characters, particularly Stevens, of course, keep getting in their own way. That’s how it goes most of the time, but rarely do we get as moving and delicate a view of it as Ishiguro gives us here.
The Remains of the Day is among Sung J. Woo’s five top mysterious classic novels that take place in a grand manor house, Saumya Roy's seven books about star-crossed lovers, A. Natasha Joukovsky's seven novels that subvert social norms, Mark Skinner's ten best country house novels, Xan Brooks's ten top terrible houses in fiction, Molly Schoemann-McCann's nine great books for people who love Downton Abbey, Lucy Lethbridge's ten top books about servants, and Tim Vine's six best books.
--Marshal Zeringue
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