Is there an audiobook of The Remains of the Day?

Yes. The Remains of the Day has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Nicholas Guy Smith.

How long is the The Remains of the Day audiobook?

The The Remains of the Day audiobook runs 9 hr 23 min.

Our review

The Remains of the Day

Name: The Remains of the Day
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro

4.5/ 5 · Outstanding

Kazuo Ishiguro's Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day follows Stevens, an English butler on a country drive who starts to doubt the lord he served and the life he built around that service. A restrained literary novel about dignity, memory and what we refuse to say.

Narrated by Nicholas Guy Smith

Audiobook · 9 hr 23 min

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How the narration holds up

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The Review

Our take

Stevens has spent three decades at Darlington Hall, and he has never once asked himself what it cost. Then his new employer, an American named Mr. Farraday, suggests a drive through the countryside, and the question arrives anyway. The road trip frames the whole novel. As the miles pass, Stevens tells you about the house, the lord he served and the head housekeeper, Miss Kenton, whom he held at a careful distance.

What Ishiguro does with that voice is the reason to read it. Stevens is formal to the point of stiffness, and he narrates his own life the way he would announce a guest, with every sentence squared off and every feeling kept out of the room. The prose is smooth and polite, and the real story happens in what he leaves unsaid. You catch the hurt in a pause he doesn't acknowledge. You want to interrupt him, and you can't, because what he did is already done. His idea of dignity is that a great butler disappears fully into his role, and the book lets that idea run its course until it becomes both his achievement and his tragedy. There is even a funny, painful passage of him trying to learn how to banter, as if warmth were a skill he could study like a trade.

The novel is also about memory, and about how it softens under pressure. Stevens recalls his years under Lord Darlington with loyalty that wobbles as he gets closer to what that loyalty served. His father's death, his feelings for Miss Kenton, the hints about Darlington's sympathies in the years before the war: each comes back adjusted, and the pleasure is in noticing the adjustments. Lines near the end echo the opening, and that rhyme stays with you after the last page.

Why you should read

Voice-driven literary fiction with an unreliable narrator
Books about duty, class and regret
Restrained prose where feeling hides in the gaps
Short novels that reward a slow read

What to expect

A road trip that frames a long look back
Formal first-person narration
A slow opening that pays off later
Emotion carried by what goes unsaid

It needs patience. The first stretch is slow, and the life of a butler is not an obvious source of drama; some readers admit they found it dull before it gripped them. It is short, though, at 258 pages, and the pages go faster than the tone suggests. By the end, Stevens's careful, courteous account has made the small things he lost feel enormous, and the loss lands without a single raised voice.

Reviewed by Avery · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.5/ 5

Outstanding

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Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of The Remains of the Day?: Yes. The Remains of the Day has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Nicholas Guy Smith.
Listen free with Audible
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
How long is the The Remains of the Day audiobook?: The The Remains of the Day audiobook runs 9 hr 23 min.

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Common questions

What is The Remains of the Day about?: Stevens has spent three decades at Darlington Hall, and he has never once asked himself what it cost. Then his new employer, an American named Mr. Farraday, suggests a drive through the countryside, and the question arrives anyway. The road trip frames the whole novel. As the miles pass, Stevens…
Is The Remains of the Day worth reading?: We scored The Remains of the Day 4.5 out of 5. Kazuo Ishiguro's Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day follows Stevens, an English butler on a country drive who starts to doubt the lord he served and the life he built around that service. A restrained literary novel about dignity, memory and what we refuse to say.

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