The Remains of the Day

by Kazuo Ishiguro

This is a great, great book about life, told by an english butler at the beginning of the last century. His name is Stevens, and he is highly dedicated to his job, or his calling as a butler. He sees great pride, and dignity in his work - serving other people. It is sometimes scary how he undermines himself, thinking other people, socially above him, deserve his respect. I can imagine that butlers had to act a certain way, and of course be loyal to their Master, but to really believe and support this heirarchy, and to mantain and enforce this ideology? It was really interesting to read a book from this butler's point of view. He talked a great deal about dignity. This is something one cannot describe - it is embedded in all of one's actions.

He lead a lonely life, distancing everyone around him, allways aiming at being a professional. Didn't dare come to close to anyone. He aimed at becoming a first class butler, taking after butlers in stories he heard. Never once realising they were humans capable of making mistakes. His role models were almost fictional, myths, and he strived to be just like them.

The prose is fantastic, the plot too. Stevens has embarked on a road trip whilst his new american employer is out of town. Stevens' life is recaptured through his reminiscences of life past. The trip has a destination, but it becomes all to clear that the road leads not only there, but into the mind of Stevens, and that maybe he'll find some new truths along the way.

Kurkov

Death and the Pinguin by Andrey Kurkov

I've finished Death and the Pinguin a week ago. I was truly disapointed. It is the most popular russian book to be translated at the moment. Andrey Kurkov's latest book, The Nightly Milkman, was so much funnier, more twisted and more relevant. And by relevant I mean more political. It was also more intelligently written.

Ukraine and its politicians were pictured in an allegory consisting of ordinary people, with shrewed problems, absurd but appicable to society. For example, Irina, one of the female protagonists is wrongly led to believe that she is giving her breast milk to motherless infants, and is forced to feed her own daughter with milk substitute. She is poor and has no other source of income. All this time, though, she is providing one of the members of parlament milk for his daily bath in order for him to keep staying young looking. It is an attack by Andrey Kurkov on the guvernment, and what has become of the orange revolution. My interpretation is that the revolution promised so many things, blinded the masses, and that Ukraine now is corrupted. Considering that the parliament and Presidency are consists of different parties, one is also lead to believe that people are disappointed.

I am not too well read on Ukrainian politics to continue this discussion, but The nighlty milkman is still a more interesting book than Death and the Pinguin as the first is much more interesting on more than one level.