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Alan Bray
- Jul 6
- 5 min
After Rain
This week, after two abstract pieces about re-reading and time, let’s return to a writing example, William Trevor’s short story After...
Alan Bray
- Jun 29
- 5 min
Time Remembered
An excellent novel or short story is immersive. The “story-world” becomes the reader’s world; one feels as if one knows the characters,...
Alan Bray
- Jun 22
- 4 min
Re-Read
All reading is re-reading, according to some very savvy folks. This sounds like a paradox, my friends, after all, reading is different...
Alan Bray
- Jun 15
- 4 min
Surprise!
In my exploration of Gilead, the first book of four by Marilynne Robinson, I have attempted to look more at its writerly aspects vs. the...
Alan Bray
- Jun 1
- 5 min
The Prodigal Son
I think it’s fair to say that the central conflict/story in Gilead is within the relationship between Rev. Ames and Jack Boughton....
Alan Bray
- May 18
- 7 min
Please Read The Letter That I Wrote
What is the style of Gilead? I find it harder to analyze Gilead as a piece of fiction because it reads like a convincing memoir and/or...
Alan Bray
- May 4
- 5 min
Gilead
“I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where? And I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why? and I...
Alan Bray
- Apr 20
- 4 min
The Unbearable Inevitability Of Style
Dear friends, I’m back. The vacation was great. We saw the house in Madrid where Cervantes wrote Don Quixote. I do want to announce a...
Alan Bray
- Mar 30
- 4 min
Where'd She Go?
It is near the end of Justine that the reader is shown the “how” of Justine’s disappearance, as well as other plot points previously...
Alan Bray
- Mar 24
- 6 min
My Style Is Ba-Roque
First, an apology for posting this a day late on Friday vs. Thursday. We were away on a trip, and the post was not ready. Great regrets,...
Alan Bray
- Mar 16
- 4 min
Sex And The City - Justine
The history of the city of Alexandria, Egypt is one of frequent conquest by different empires. The British took over in 1881 and remained...
Alan Bray
- Mar 9
- 5 min
Justine
Today, let’s talk about Justine, Lawrence Durrell’s 1957 book that begins his four-novel opus, The Alexandria Quartet. The other novels...
Alan Bray
- Mar 2
- 4 min
The Moved Heart - The Cat's Table
If you wanted to write a story about the adventures of an eleven-year-old boy taking a journey to a new home on an ocean liner in the...
Alan Bray
- Feb 23
- 5 min
The Seductiveness Of Cigarettes and Coffee - The Cat's Table
So in The Cat’s Table, is one of the memories that the narrator has about his younger self a memory of sexual awakening—the time when he...
Alan Bray
- Feb 16
- 3 min
View Out The Back - The Cat's Table
Last time, we talked about the omniscience of the narrator in Cat’s Table. The narrator, the older Canadian writer originally from Sri...
Alan Bray
- Feb 9
- 3 min
Ark of the Story Arc. Ack! - Cat's Table
The Cat’s Table, like other stories by Michael Ondaatje, is episodic in structure. The term episodic fiction refers to a set of episodes...
Alan Bray
- Feb 2
- 4 min
The Cat's Table
This week, a new novel, Michael Ondaatje’s 2011 The Cat’s Table. It is the story of an adult narrator telling the story of a voyage taken...
Alan Bray
- Jan 26
- 4 min
Breakfast On The Morning Train
The Unconsoled begins with Ryder, a famous pianist, arriving in an unnamed European city to perform a concert. Through more than five...
Alan Bray
- Jan 19
- 5 min
The Unconsoled Narrator
One of the features of Ishiguro’s Unconsoled is that it makes use of two forms of narration. The story begins with close first-person...
Alan Bray
- Jan 12
- 4 min
Is Anyone Listening?
When I began this blog almost three years ago, I set out to write about particular features of stories I enjoyed, their narrational...