The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

I have realised that after reading a book and formulating my review, the highest accolade I seem to be able to award, is whether I would want to re-read it at some future date.  I must say that I’m not much one for re-reading books for as I’ve said before, I always feel that I could be discovering some new amazing story out there.  Still, of course there are books that I return to time and time again and this is usually the deciding factor as to whether I buy a book to treasure forever.  In my ongoing quest to read all these Booker-winning novels and the challenge of getting hold of them from the library I have also started looking for secondhand versions.  ‘The True History of the Kelly Gang’ was one of these purchases which unfortunately may well be returned to the ongoing literary cycle of secondhand bookshops.  However, the subject of this review will not share this fate as I fully intend to hang on to it to peruse at some future time.

This is another book where I had actually seen the film first, a few years ago but it failed to make any particularly lasting impression on me.  However, the book I found to be delightful and a treat to read.  The formulation of the story-telling was well crafted with the plot following Stevens, the butler at Darlington Hall on an infrequent holiday where he travels from Oxfordshire to the South West and while he considers the trip and as he travels he recalls past events over his career. 

It was such an interesting, multi-layered story interwoven with reflections about a plethora of topics wide-ranging from honour, dignity, loyalty, what it means to be British, to be alive, to serve and how values have changed.  I can’t even describe all the themes that this book skillfully touches on without even really seeming to.  Its scope was incredibly far-reaching while actually focusing on smaller, seemingly more trivial aspects of life.  Stevens as the narrator is an inspired perspective on all the events and characters that occur at Darlington Hall during the inter-war years and his over-riding restrained demeanor is conveyed magnificently by the tone of the writing.  This is definitely one to savour. And I fully intend to read other books by Ishiguro and I am interested to research more about the historical context in which this book is set. 

The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

My sister and I went on holiday to Scandinavia two years ago and as we had decided to travel from country to country by train this meant joyfully having time to read but also that we had the added weight of the books to consider.  Clearly this is not an unusual dilemma for the book-loving traveler, and you may well start extolling the advantages of a Kindle or similar device in such situations, but that’s another whole issue!  Anyway, we decided to share books.  Now, when going on holiday I usually choose a classic which will last for the duration of the trip and which I will then associate with that particular trip, for example, ‘War and Peace’ I read in the Languedoc region of France.  However, my sister has a different approach of reading novels by authors from the area she is visiting or are set there.  So that is what we did, including ‘Hunger’ by Knut Hamsun and my souvenir from Helsinki was an English translation of ‘The Kalevala’.  However, returning to my most recent Booker despite it’s entrenchment in Australian identity, my annual leave and budget did not unfortunately extend to a trip Down Under and I therefore read the majority of the novel while on holiday in Malta!  And it wasn’t even as if the climate was similar as I visited during a rather unseasonably cold spell.

Still I don’t think that it was solely the lack of temperature replication that resulted in my rather indifferent view of this novel.  I tried not to let my opinion of Peter Carey’s previous Booker winner of 1988 cloud my judgement of his 2001 contribution especially as he is the only author to have won the Booker twice – which is clearly an admirable feat.  He follows an interesting approach, attempting to convey that Ned Kelly himself wrote the story as a record of the true facts for his daughter whom he never met.  Therefore the usual rules of punctuation, grammar and spelling are not utilised to give the book a more authentic and immediate feel for the writing of an uneducated man, however, as I mentioned while reviewing ‘Sacred Hunger’, it makes for uncomfortable and rather annoying reading.  Furthermore, as is often the unfortunate curse of the historical novel, the plot is restricted by the nature of events which in this case, although I hesitate to describe it as such, ended up becoming rather tedious – which obviously is strange because he actually led an eventful life. 

Regrettably, I didn’t find the setting of the story particularly interesting or engaging although the novel does effectively highlight the hardships and injustices of life in the Outback and the difficult choices that were made due to loyalties of family and friendship.  It also educated me on the story of Ned Kelly about whom I knew very little, although as is the case with so many historical figures, the truth is so lost in legend and myth that it is probably impossible to extract fact from fiction.  I can see why it won, as an ambitious account of a controversial figure and I’m glad to have read it but it just wasn’t for me and won’t be one I’ll be planning to re-read.