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Alan Bray
Apr 15, 20214 min read
Stevens the Obscure
Remains has an interesting structure. As I have said, the novel is broken up into a prologue and seven chapters, each one identified by a...
Alan Bray
Apr 8, 20214 min read
Road Running
What is the plot in Remains? Well, what is plot? “The main events of a play, novel, movie, or similar work, devised and presented by the...
Alan Bray
Apr 1, 20213 min read
Methods of Movement
In a 1986 Guardian interview, (pre-Remains), Ishiguro writes that he was dissatisfied with his early novels because he judged them as...
Alan Bray
Mar 25, 20214 min read
Isn’t It a Lovely Day?
Last week, I began our discussion of The Remains of the Day by saying that we’d sniffed out another unreliable narrator—Mr. Stevens, the...
Alan Bray
Mar 18, 20214 min read
The Remains of the Day
This week, a new story, Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1988 The Remains of the Day. (Whiny voice: This week, a new story, Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the...
Alan Bray
Mar 11, 20213 min read
The Perils of Smooth Jazz
One of the hallmarks of fiction, one of the things that often keeps us reading, is how the protagonist transforms in the story. Aristotle...
Alan Bray
Mar 4, 20214 min read
Unreliable and Not In Control—Bad Combination
I have written about how Pat is an unreliable narrator in Silver Linings. The unnamed narrator presents Pat’s story as a sort of journal...
Alan Bray
Feb 25, 20214 min read
I Don't Believe You
I have said that, in Silver Linings, Pat is an unreliable narrator. Let’s look at this more closely. An unreliable narrator is a narrator...
Alan Bray
Feb 18, 20211 min read
Blue Lake to Publish Pequod
I'm very pleased to announce that Blue Lake Review will publish my short story "The Loss of the Whaling Ship Pequod" in their May issue....
Alan Bray
Feb 18, 20214 min read
The Silver Linings Playbook
This week a new story, Matthew Quick’s 2008 novel, The Silver Linings Playbook. I first read the book six years ago after seeing the...
Alan Bray
Feb 11, 20214 min read
Aren't You a Little Obsessed?
What role does transformation play in Grand Central? Transformation is a key element of fiction and of memoir. “A transformation is a...
Alan Bray
Feb 4, 20213 min read
Lily Eater
Last week, I wrestled mightily with the question of whether Grand Central is a memoir or a work of fiction, deciding that the story seems...
Alan Bray
Jan 28, 20214 min read
I Remember We
‘Kay. I have said that, this week, we should examine Grand Central as a work of fiction. I felt good about the clarity, not exactly smug,...
Alan Bray
Jan 21, 20213 min read
The Thing In Itself?
A week of sleepless nights, best beloved. I’ve been struggling with Grand Central. The personal nature of the story, a possibly...
Alan Bray
Jan 14, 20215 min read
By Grand Central Station I Lay Down and Wept
A new book this week, Elizabeth Smart’s 1945 novella, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, weighing in at one-hundred and twelve...
Alan Bray
Jan 7, 20213 min read
This Is the End, My Only Friend
The ending of The Moslem Wife tells us what the story is about—the point—if you will. We talked last week about how the style of the...
Alan Bray
Dec 31, 20204 min read
Stylin’
What is the style of The Moslem Wife? By way of review, fictional style can be thought of as the implied author, an entity who mediates...
Alan Bray
Dec 24, 20203 min read
Startling Developments
From the outset, the Narrator entity of The Moslem Wife expresses cutting judgements of the characters, skewering their vanities and...
Alan Bray
Dec 17, 20203 min read
The Moslem Wife
A new story this week, dear friends, The Moslem Wife by Mavis Gallant, first published in The New Yorker in 1976. The story is included...
Alan Bray
Dec 10, 20204 min read
Migration
An interesting thing to note about Lion is that four of the characters—Patrick, Hana, Caravaggio, and Clara—appear in Ondaatje’s next...