The choices for August are "Miss Webster and Charif" by Patricia Duncker at either Ingeborg- Drewitz Bibliothek, or Hundt Hammer Stein or Buchkantine and "The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox" by Maggie O'Farrell at Saint Georges English Bookshop.

Jeremy's group will next meet will next meet at "Another Country" bookshop on August 15th to discuss "The Remains of the Day" by Kazuo Ishiguro.

If you would like to join the reading group, please send Jeremy an E-mail (jrj_dunn@yahoo.co.uk).

Info, dates, locations, reviews and information on the authors

Synopses & Reviews for "The Remains of the Day"

Publisher Comments: The Remains of the Day is a profoundly compelling portrait of the perfect English butler and of his fading, insular world in postwar England. At the end of his three decades of service at Darlington Hall, Stevens embarks on a country drive, during which he looks back over his career to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving "a great gentleman." But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's "greatness" and graver doubts about his own faith in the man he served.

Reviews: "Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel depicts his adopted England with the same precision of language which painted his native Japan in An Artist of the Floating World . This is 1950's England as seen through the eyes of Stevens, one of the last remaining true butlers, who lives only to do his duty, to serve his master and humanity in the hope of preserving justice throughout the world.

But as Stevens undertakes a journey to the West Country that ultimately becomes a journey into his past we realize, as does he himself, that his view of the world is strangely double-edged, blurred by a shiny veneer of self-deception. Slowly a sterile, duty-bound life of missed opportunities and stifled emotions arises as Stevens prepares to face his old age. And, as the bastion of the English nobility, when his vision begins to waver, a whole strata of society starts to crumble and a different story emerges. Beautifully written and hauntingly poignant." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)

"The novel rests firmly on the narrative sophistication and flawless control of tone...of a most impressive novelist." Julian Barnes

"Brilliant...a story both beautiful and cruel." Salman Rushdie

"A perfect novel. I couldn't put it down." Ann Beattie

"A virtuoso performance...put on with dazzling daring and aplomb." The New York Review of Books

"Brilliant and quietly devastating." Newsweek "An intricate and dazzling novel." The New York Times

"One of the best books of the decade." The Boston Globe

"One of the best books of the year." The New York Times Book Review