It’s dangerous to reminisce. There are so many ways to get trapped in the past: “if only I had...”; “things were so much better then...”; and we all know people stuck in their imaginary what-ifs. Then there’s reading someone else’s reminiscences—there’s so much that can go wrong there. In the right hands, though: wow. This was a masterpiece that kept me engaged and thinking; it will likely stay with me for a long time.

If you haven’t read this, and are over forty: read it. Don’t try to learn “what it’s about,” don’t read cover-jacket blurbs: this isn’t a book ”about” anything, it’s a journey; one in which you might find more than a handful of parallels with lives you recognize. Including perhaps your own. Ishiguro’s language and insights are sublime. Most importantly for me, the narrator’s voice was so perfect: he could’ve made her wistful, or bitter, or resentful. There is drama and cruelty in the story, both individual and societal. Loss and longing. It could’ve gone many ways, but what I got from it is a reminder, both sobering and refreshing, that this is the life we have. We can reflect usefully on our growth: the insecurities we had (and may still carry), how our unspoken assumptions wreck the possibility of communicating with others. The narrator’s life has been set on a course that is likely harder than yours or mine, yet her voice is one of curiosity, thoughtfulness, never self-pity. She thinks back to choices and decision points, understanding that things may have gone differently, and she moves on. I suppose most of us wonder, from time to time, if we’re wasting or have wasted our lives. We may never know, and some days it may feel more like it than others, but even in the deepest pits we still have some agency to do our best. Few of us will have the lives we’ve dreamed, but we can still make something out of what we have.