“Pretty much perfect” just about sums it up. You want Stevens to be an unreliable narrator, but he is such a blank canvas that he has no way of not revealing the truth about himself or what he understands about other people and their inner lives. Even his attempts at rewriting his past are completely transparent. Mr Ishiguro’s prose is an absolute delight as well: not a wasted syllable in the entire book. It’s a portrait that reveals more details of its subject the more you look at it.