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Alan Bray
Jun 9, 20224 min read
Science Fiction? - Station Eleven
Narratives are a balance of mimetic, thematic, and synthetic threads. Mimetic threads are those that present convincing characters and...
Alan Bray
Jun 2, 20224 min read
You Got The Time? - Station Eleven
How is time handled in Station Eleven? I can say straight off that time is discontinuous and episodic, two terms we’ve looked at before....
Alan Bray
May 26, 20223 min read
What If Thinking - Station Eleven
One of the central questions Station Eleven asks its readers is: what would you do in a world without technology? No electricity, no...
Alan Bray
May 19, 20225 min read
Station Eleven
This week, a new novel, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven. This acclaimed book was published in 2014 and has been adapted into a...
Alan Bray
May 12, 20226 min read
Finally Normal - Normal People
This week, I want to finish looking at Normal People, although this rich book could easily yield more discussion. However, certain...
Alan Bray
May 5, 20226 min read
Safe Sex - Normal People
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...
Alan Bray
Apr 28, 20224 min read
Class Dismissed - Normal People
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...
Alan Bray
Apr 20, 20224 min read
You Show Me Yours, I'll Show You Mine - Normal People
We’ve talked about how, at times, the locus of narration in Normal People can be hard to determine. That first sentence, “Marianne...
Alan Bray
Apr 14, 20225 min read
Having Fun With Reading - Normal People
This week, let’s look more closely at the role of the narrator in Normal People. A definition, please. A person who narrates something,...
Alan Bray
Apr 7, 20223 min read
Mental Time Travel - Normal People
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...
Alan Bray
Mar 31, 20224 min read
Free The Speech!
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...
Alan Bray
Mar 24, 20224 min read
Normal People
This week, a new story, my friends, Irish author Sally Rooney’s 2018 novel, Normal People. Normal People was a bestseller in the United...
Alan Bray
Mar 17, 20224 min read
Nocturnal Progression
Last week, due to constraints of space and time, we interrupted our discussion of Cellists, the last story in Nocturnes. Let’s continue...
Alan Bray
Mar 10, 20225 min read
The Fellas In The Band Observe A Flirty Actress
In Cellists, the fifth and final story in Nocturnes, we return to the city of Venice but with new characters. The complex narrative...
Alan Bray
Mar 3, 20225 min read
You Turkey
The fourth story in Nocturnes is entitled Nocturne and is the longest of the five contained therein. Does this have meaning? I don’t...
Alan Bray
Feb 24, 20224 min read
You Talkin' To Me?
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...
Alan Bray
Feb 17, 20225 min read
The Band Played On
The title of the next story in Nocturnes contains another musical reference, Come Rain or Come Shine, the title of a famous American song...
Alan Bray
Feb 10, 20224 min read
Lost Illusions
Last week, we began to look at Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes, specifically the first tale, Crooner. I cut the diamond in stating that I...
Alan Bray
Feb 3, 20226 min read
Nocturnes
This week a new book, Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2009 Nocturnes, originally published in Britain and then by American publisher Knopf in the same...
Alan Bray
Jan 27, 20224 min read
The Single Life
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...