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Sex is an integral part of Normal People. Let’s get a definition. (Wait…what? A definition of sex?) Yes, we all “know” what sex is, but I...

This week, let’s look at one of two major themes in Normal People, social class. I realize that last time, I left off with the threat to...

We’ve talked about how, at times, the locus of narration in Normal People can be hard to determine. That first sentence, “Marianne...

This week, let’s look more closely at the role of the narrator in Normal People. A definition, please. A person who narrates something,...

Normal People, I’m going to say, is a book of recollection. A story of two people, told from a future vantage point and ending in a way...

As we continue our exploration of Sally Rooney’s Normal People, let’s take a look at some structural issues. The story concerns two main...

This week, a new story, my friends, Irish author Sally Rooney’s 2018 novel, Normal People. Normal People was a bestseller in the United...

Last week, due to constraints of space and time, we interrupted our discussion of Cellists, the last story in Nocturnes. Let’s continue...

In Cellists, the fifth and final story in Nocturnes, we return to the city of Venice but with new characters. The complex narrative...

The fourth story in Nocturnes is entitled Nocturne and is the longest of the five contained therein. Does this have meaning? I don’t...

In the third story of Nocturnes, Malvern Hills, we immediately come on a first-person narrator who is never named. “I’d spent the spring...

The title of the next story in Nocturnes contains another musical reference, Come Rain or Come Shine, the title of a famous American song...

Last week, we began to look at Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes, specifically the first tale, Crooner. I cut the diamond in stating that I...

This week a new book, Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2009 Nocturnes, originally published in Britain and then by American publisher Knopf in the same...

Last time, we looked at the end of Kino and the way Kino the character transforms, driven to an extreme point by the experience of having...

Kino sets off, leaving a note that the bar will be closed till further notice. He stays at a hotel, goes to the movies, hires a...

When we last left Kino, he’d just had the encounter with the woman burned by cigarettes and was shown feeling ambivalently about her....

Kino’s bar is a modest success. We learn more about “the man.” “My name is Kamita,” he said. It’s written with the characters for “god”...

This week, a new story, Kino, a long short story written by Haruki Murakami. An English version of Kino first appeared in The New Yorker...

A friend recently wrote that he would be interested in my thinking about Steppenwolf in light of recent mass and/or school shootings, as...