But it is not particularly important to Stevens, who has no political wisdom, and who is, in any case, preoccupied with enforcing his own regimen of emotional repression. It seems important to an understanding of “The Remains of the Day” that the man for whom Stevens once worked, Lord Darlington, was a Fascist sympathizer. But he is also expert at arranging his figurines against shadowy and suggestive backdrops: post-fascist Japan, in “A Pale View of Hills” (1982) and “An Artist of the Floating World” (1986) an unidentified Central European town undergoing an indeterminate cultural crisis, in “The Unconsoled” (1995) Shanghai at the time of the Sino-Japanese War, in “When We Were Orphans” (2000). Ishiguro is expert at getting readers choked up over these struggles-even over the ludicrous self-deceptions of the butler in “The Remains of the Day,” the hopeless Stevens. The emotional situation in his novels is spelled out in meticulous, sometimes comically tedious detail, and the focus is entirely on the narrator’s struggles to achieve clarity and contentment in an uncoöperative world.
It is always a puzzle to know where Ishiguro’s true subject lies. The central premise in this book is basically the same as that in the book that made Ishiguro famous, “The Remains of the Day” (1989): even when happiness is standing right in front of you, it’s very hard to grasp. As is customary with Ishiguro, the narrator, Kathy, is ingenuous but keenly desirous of telling us how it was, the prose feels self-consciously stilted and banal, and the psychology is not deep.
So the small betrayal leaves an enormous wound. Their lives are short they know that they are doomed. The triangle is a standard one: Kathy is attracted to Tommy Tommy gets involved with Ruth, who is also Kathy’s best friend Ruth knows that Tommy is really in love with Kathy Kathy gets Tommy in the end, although they both realize that it is too late, and that they have missed their best years.
Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go” (Knopf $24) is a novel about a young woman named Kathy H., and her friendships with two schoolmates, Ruth and Tommy.
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