Stevens accepts, and sets out for Cornwall, where Miss Kenton (now Mrs. Farraday, encourages Stevens to borrow his car to take a well-earned vacation-a 'motoring trip'. His new employer, a wealthy American named Mr. Stevens starts to consider paying Miss Kenton a visit. Furthermore, Darlington Hall is short-staffed and could greatly use a skilled housekeeper like Miss Kenton. The novel begins in 1956, with Stevens receiving a letter from a former colleague, the housekeeper Miss Kenton, describing her married life, which Stevens believes hints at an unhappy marriage. As the work progresses, two central themes are revealed: Lord Darlington was a Nazi sympathizer and Stevens is in love with Miss Kenton, the housekeeper at Darlington Hall, Lord Darlington's estate. The novel tells, in first-person narration, the story of Stevens, an English butler who has dedicated his life to the loyal service of Lord Darlington (who is recently deceased, and whom Stevens describes in increasing detail in flashbacks). In 2022, it was included on the ' Big Jubilee Read' list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II. A film adaptation of the novel, made in 1993 and starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, was nominated for eight Academy Awards.

The work received the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1989.

In 1956, he takes a road trip to visit a former colleague, and reminisces about events at Darlington Hall in the 1920s and 1930s. The protagonist, Stevens, is a butler with a long record of service at Darlington Hall, a stately home near Oxford, England. The Remains of the Day is a 1989 novel by the Nobel Prize-winning British author Kazuo Ishiguro.

The remains of the day book reviews