Maybe you have to be British

I just finished Remains of the Day and frankly, I don't get it. This thing won the Booker prize? This is one of the "Books you can't live without"? I'll admit that it was clever and the author very skillfully plotted the story so that the protagonist became aware of his own past only gradually. That said, I never identified with the main character. By the time the lights go on I don;t have enough investment in Stevens to weather the ending. So the whole thing just went kind of "plop" for me.