not sure I have enough to talk about, but at this rate I'll finish the book soon

it's increasingly striking that Stevens isn't just someone fixated on the past but his sense of identity

he can go on effortlessly about his profession, both his own experiences and his philosophies about it, for lack of a better word

soon enough it becomes clear that it's because he has nothing else

and his limitation of himself is in part voluntary

his self-denial seems pretty clearly to have gone beyond what is expected of him even by the standards of his time

and that really explains the continuous reminescences I think, it's all this he has repressed and is still unwilling to think about the deeper meaning of, but can't help thinking about

that Miss Kenton was close to him is still something that puzzles me

but it may have come from the fact that they did not have many others to talk to, in spite of their personalities obviously not meshing

you get the sense of her overwhelming disappointment in his self-denial

and it isn't even in their more dramatic confrontations that this comes out

I think overall this is turning out to be a story of subjective narration where the narrator slowly realizes how subjective it was

but I may have spoken too soon

it's also a very hard book to osmose

the style is just perfect for the story that needs to be told, but I have no ability to even imitate it

incidentally this book won the Booker prize, which Mantel's two Cromwell books also did recently

this is something that I will always trust

oh god he let his car run out of gas

this ossan