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The Possible Annoyance of Questions

As promised, let’s look at the penultimate section of Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight, entitled “The Boy on the Roof.” Up to this point, the story has been churning along in fine fashion, using the perspective of Nathaniel Williams to carry us to Nathaniel’s mother, Rose’s death. Nathaniel asks his deceased mother to tell him about the man “you lied to me about.” (and this implies that he’s aware and has accepted that she did lie to him about her past). The new section begins wit

Alan Bray

2 days ago4 min read

Visiting with Mom

Hello. I have returned from NYC where I attended a conference focused on marketing rather than writing a novel. I learned a lot and am happy to be back. Let’s jump into Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight. The next chapter of the book is entitled “In the Archives” and has to do with Nathaniel’s work in the Foreign Office in 1959. He continues to look for information regarding his now-deceased mother and her wartime activities but finds little. Although he describes being estranged fr

Alan Bray

Jul 33 min read

Inheritence

The second section of Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight is entitled Inheritance. What has been inherited, you ask? Let’s continue, searching for answers. It begins: “In November of 1959, when I was twenty-eight, after some years of what had felt like wildness, I bought a home for myself in a Suffolk village that could be reached by a few hours train-ride from London.” A short digression on craft. Mr. Ondaatje lets we the readers know when and where we are in a direct and masterly w

Alan Bray

Jun 194 min read

Remembering The Darter and Others

At the same time that Nathaniel, the narrator/protagonist of Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight, is having sex with Agnes in otherwise abandoned buildings, the Darter, a family regular since the disappearance of Nathaniel’s parents, involves Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, in nightly boat trips to smuggle greyhounds into Britain for dog races. Nathaniel enjoys it. Woof! “That first magical summer of my life we smuggled more than forty-five dogs a week at the height of the racing s

Alan Bray

Jun 123 min read

A Curious Pleasure

The overall theme of Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight, seems to be how the past effects the present, or, to put it another way, how our experiences make us who we are. One of the experiences the narrator Nathaniel reflects on in the story is his relationships with women. He undergoes the disappearance of his mother, Rose, just before his sexual awakening. Coincidence, you ask? As our old friend Don Juan said, there are no coincidences—especially in fiction. (He didn’t say that las

Alan Bray

Jun 53 min read

Creative Fiction

An important question to ponder in reading Warlight by Michael Ondaatje is, just what kind of story is it? Fiction or memoir? If it’s fiction there should be elements of traditional story structure therein—a dramatic question, an inciting incident, beginning, middle, and end, climax and resolution. Is it a memoir? “A memoir is a factual, narrative nonfiction account written from the author’s personal perspective. Derived from the French word mémoire (meaning "memory"), it foc

Alan Bray

May 294 min read

Warlight

This week, dear friends, a new story, Michael Ondaatje’s 2018 Warlight. Like Ondaatje’s The English Patient, this novel is set in the aftermath of WWII. In fact, one reviewer said that Warlight is like the B-side of English Patient—this was meant as praise, meaning that Warlight explores similar themes but is not as overtly romantic; in a sense, quieter and more restrained. (There are no planes in Warlight. There are boats—barges and leaky fishing craft). The title refers to

Alan Bray

May 224 min read

Amber

As we approach the end of our stroll through Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue, it would be good to give further consideration to the intriguing preface and several afterwords, known collectively and formally as paratext. Our friend A.I. says, “Paratext refers to the elements surrounding a text—such as covers, titles, prefaces, and footnotes—that frame, promote, and help readers interpret it. Coined by Gérard Genette, this "threshold" material, including design and formattin

Alan Bray

May 154 min read

Blind Spot

Two-thirds of the way through Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue, a shift occurs, a shift in both plot and tone. As I mentioned last week, the novel’s protagonist Aoyama, asks her Taiwanese interpreter, Chi-chan, to accompany her to Japan where they will live together and Chi-chan can pursue her interest in translation. However, Chi-chan refuses and says that Aoyama has a “blind spot.” The two women continue to travel through Taiwan but, looking back from the vantage point of

Alan Bray

May 83 min read

Noh Demons

In Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue, the story continues in a somewhat playful tone through the middle section of the book. The narrator. Aoyama, describes a chaste infatuation with her interpreter/companion, Chi-chan, who remains inscrutable. Around page 174, after learning that Chi-chan faces an unhappy arranged marriage with an older man who will expect her to do nothing more than produce sons, Aoyama asks her to come to Japan with her, where they will live together, and

Alan Bray

May 14 min read

What Are You Implying?

The middle part of Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue shows a slow escalation of the themes introduced during and after the book’s inciting incident. Aoyama is increasingly attracted to O-san, and vice versa—seemingly, although this is put into question later. After all, it’s all presented through Aoyama’s perspective. And there’s a strong sense of Aoyama being outraged by the racism shown to the Taiwanese by the Japanese, although, again, this is later re-contextualized. The

Alan Bray

Apr 243 min read

Deja Vu?

Last time, in a first discussion of Yang Shuang-zi’s novel Taiwan Travelogue , I mentioned that the book’s form conveys information about and is congruent with, the story. It was only a day later that a man came up to me on the street, tears in his eyes, and said, “But what did you mean by that?” Alarmed by random encounters, I hurried away, but ever since, his question has nagged me, and I will attempt to explain. In a story about things not being what they seem, the novel’s

Alan Bray

Apr 174 min read

Taiwan Travelogue

This week, a new and very interesting book, dear friends, Yang Shuang-zi’s 2020 novel, Taiwan Travelogue. Originally published in Taiwan, this book has been short-listed for the 2026 International Booker Prize and was translated to English by Lin King in 2024. What the heck is very interesting about this novel? you say. Well, on the surface, it appears to be a reprint of an old travel book about a Japanese woman visiting Taiwan in the late 1930s. The publisher has taken pai

Alan Bray

Apr 104 min read

What Time Is It?

This just in— The Wax Child did not make the cut for the International Booker Prize short list. Oh, oh, the wax child isn’t going to like that. The Wax Child by Olga Ravn is a story set in historic time—early 17 th century Denmark. However, there is no statement of this in the beginning of the text. Of course, due to a phenomenon we have previously noted, the reader who comes to this book no doubt has some preconceptions that may include the story’s historic setting. Indee

Alan Bray

Apr 34 min read

Fussin' 'Bout the Narrator

Last time, I proposed discussing the effect of utilizing an inanimate narrator in Olga Ravn’s The Wax Child . Here goes: This is not the first story to have an inanimate narrator. Orhan Pamuk’s My Name Is Red features narration by the color red; a fig tree does the job in Elif Shafak's The Island of Missing Trees . (‘Kay, a tree is alive, but you get the idea). Indeed, we could say that many novels feature an omniscient narrator with no identifying information provided abou

Alan Bray

Mar 273 min read

The Narrator's Lament

“No one listens to a thing I say. Although I speak all the time.” So says the unnamed, inanimate narrator of Olga Ravn’s The Wax Child . Who hears it then? Someone—more on this later. What we know about this narrator is that it was created by Christenze Crucknow, who carried this wax effigy beneath her right arm as if it was a real human infant in utero. Why, you ask, would someone do this, making an effigy and treating it in this manner? “Wax effigies in witchcraft are fig

Alan Bray

Mar 204 min read

The Wax Child

This week, a new story, Olga Ravn’s 2025 novel, The Wax Child . This book, translated to English from Danish by Matin Aitken, has been nominated for an International Booker Prize. It begins: “I am a child shaped in beeswax. I am made like a doll the size of a human forearm. They have given me hair and nail parings from the person who is to suffer. I was born by my mistress for forty weeks under her right arm as if I was a proper child, and my wax was softened by her warmth. A

Alan Bray

Mar 134 min read

Martin Buber in London

When we left off looking at the fourth story in David Szalay’s All That Man Is, the protagonist, Balazs, a twenty-eight-year-old Hungarian man on business in London, has just experienced a somewhat enchanted afternoon with Emma, the object of his erotic longing. Emma, who has always seemed unapproachable and distant, shows Balazs a new side, expressing curiosity and affection toward him, which he finds stunning. Her questions force him to confront his lonely and meaningless

Alan Bray

Mar 64 min read

The Two Lonely People

We left off last time in our consideration of David Szalay’s fourth story in the collection All That Man Is, with the protagonist, Balazs, realizing, perhaps belatedly, that the object of his erotic obsession, Emma, is a high-class prostitute. Moreover, he is employed by her husband, Gabor, to provide security for her during a working trip to London. “It is awkward, especially that first night.” This describes Balazs’ experience sitting most of the night in a car with Gabor,

Alan Bray

Feb 273 min read

Hound Dog?

I was going to embark on a new story this week, a new book, that is, but I’ve been enjoying the David Szalay book, All That Man Is , so much that I wanted to focus on one more of its stories, the third one, also untitled. As we’ve noted, all the stories in this collection have as their protagonist, a man of a particular age. This story has to do with Balazs, a Hungarian man in his late twenties. So, in keeping with the rest of the book, we would expect this story to explore i

Alan Bray

Feb 204 min read

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First I have a few (other) thoughts I’d like to share. What am I doing here with this blog? I’m enjoying writing it very much and hope it’s of interest to others. But what’s it about? What’s the point?

My project is to write about novels from a writer’s perspective. I’m interested in a novel’s structure, how the story is told—the narrator’s role. I‘m interested in characters—how they’re developed, how they drive the story along. And I’m interested in the style of the book, the almost hidden signs that make a book like “Starting Out in the Evening” different from, say, “Love in the Time of Cholera.”

I’m selecting novels that I’ve read at least once before, and I read them again while I’m writing the blog. The posts are a leaky sieve of spoilers—so beware. Although I love books like “Anna Karenina” and “Far From the Madding Crowd,” I won’t be writing about them because so much has already been done. I will write about books that I love, and my purpose is not to be negative. I would not be comfortable writing about a book I didn’t like and criticizing it—for me—a waste of time.

Please contact me if you'd like to know more.