Having already seen (and loved) the movie, Ishiguro’s novel really
had no surprises for me – but boy was it lovely…
From an historical point of view, Ishiguro does a remarkable
job of highlighting how easy it is to be harsh on British appeasers in hindsight
because of the consequences of their actions (personally, I think they were
fools who thought they understood Hitler and his depravity, but they were also
dealt a remarkably bad hand…). And, also, he describes how the patterns of
international diplomacy (once the happy game of the chosen few who had moved in
the same circles for centuries) changed between the wars as those positions
became way more professionalized.
And as for Mr Stevens, much like Penny does with Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory (not the most
cultural of references, I know), I wanted to hug him at times and try to
explain things that are obscure to him (like banter…) in the simplest possible
way.
Too bad that, yet again, I found myself thinking what those
people would have voted for in the EU referendum…
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