The Remains of the Day is one of the most highly regarded post-war British novels. In 1989, the novel won the Booker Prize.[6] It ranks 146th in a composite list, compiled by Brian Kunde of Stanford University, of the best 20th-century English-language fiction.[7]
In 2006, The Observer asked 150 literary writers and critics to vote for the best British, Irish or Commonwealth novel from 1980 to 2005; The Remains of the Day placed joint-eighth.[8] In 2007, The Remains of the Day was included in a Guardian list of "Books you can't live without"[9] and also in a 2009 "1000 novels everyone must read" list.[10] The Economist has described the novel as Ishiguro's "most famous book".[11] On 5 November 2019, the BBC News listed The Remains of the Day on its list of the 100 most influential novels.[12]
In a retrospective review published in The Guardian in 2012, Salman Rushdie argues that "the real story … is that of a man destroyed by the ideas upon which he has built his life".[13] In Rushdie's view, Stevens's obsession with dignified restraint has cost him loving relationships with his father and with Miss Kenton.[13]
Kathleen Wall argues that The Remains of the Day "may be seen to be about Stevens's attempts to grapple with his unreliable memories and interpretations and the havoc that his dishonesty has played on his life" (emphasis in original).[14] In particular, she suggests that The Remains of the Day challenges scholarly accounts of the unreliable narrator. Wall notes that the ironic effect of Mr Stevens's narration depends on the reader's assuming that he describes events reliably, while interpreting those events in self-serving or peculiar ways.[15]
According to Steven Connor, The Remains of the Day thematises the idea of English national identity. In Mr Stevens's view, the qualities of the best butlers, which involve restraining personal emotions in favour of keeping up appearances, are "identified as essentially English".[16] Connor argues that early critics of The Remains of the Day, who saw it as a novel about Japanese national identity, were mistaken: "there seems to be no doubt that it is Englishness that is at stake or under analysis in this novel".[17]
