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Coincidence plays a significant role in Station Eleven. We’ve talked about coincidence before in regard to other novels—let’s plunge in again. A coincidence is a surprising concurrence of events, perceived as meaningfully related, with no apparent causal connection. The film Casablanca provides a great example. Rick, on the run from an unhappy love affair (and from the entire Third Reich) runs a bar in Casablanca, Morocco. Everything is just great till his partner in the unha

Last time, I said that the Dr. Eleven graphic comic, created by Miranda, is so central to Station Eleven that it deserves its own post. So… Let’s review the meaning of mise en abime. We’ve talked about this concept before regarding other novels. The literal French translation is “put in the abyss,” and originally referred to heraldry where an image on a shield or pennant would appear again in a smaller version on the shield or pennant. So you could have, say, a picture of a s

Narratives are a balance of mimetic, thematic, and synthetic threads. Mimetic threads are those that present convincing characters and plots, life-like representations that help the reader to suspend the sense of reading a made-up story. Thematic threads are those that represent larger abstract ideas, such as good triumphing over evil or honesty being the best policy—those examples are kind of trite, but you get the idea. Synthetic threads in a novel are those that have to do

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. (You’re saying it’s “just like” something else?) Settle down. Discontinuous narrative, or nonlinear narrative, is a narrative technique, sometimes used in literature, film, hypertext websites and other narratives, where events are portrayed, for example, out of chronological order or in other ways where the narrative does not follow the dire

One of the central questions Station Eleven asks its readers is: what would you do in a world without technology? No electricity, no Internet, no modern transportation; the world-wide pandemic called “the Collapse” by the survivors in the story, has reduced people to a nomadic, anarchic existence, one in which they are fascinated by the artifacts of the way things used to be. What do the characters in the book themselves do? Beyond basic human activities like eating and sleep

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 film version. Of course, the story is supremely timely as it deals with the impact of a flu pandemic that kills off most of the earth’s population, a foreshadowing of the real devastation caused by the Covid virus. Station Eleven also shows a global shipping crisis that leaves hundreds of ships at anchor unable to unload their cargo. Sound fami

This week, I want to finish looking at Normal People, although this rich book could easily yield more discussion. However, certain audience members have a tendency to become…restless, shall we say. You know who you are. Last time, we looked at a key sequence in the book, beginning on page 229 of the 2020 Hogarth paperback edition, in a chapter entitled Four Months Later (July 2014), followed by Five Minutes Later (July 2014). The first chapter is from Marianne’s perspective,

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 like to begin with a definition of a concept I’m writing about so that everyone knows the basis of things. (So that we’re all on the same page?) ‘Kay. It’s hard to find a useful definition of sex, which is notable, I think. The English word “sex” comes from a Latin word meaning to divide. Most definitions tend to involve circularities like

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 get into a mysterious issue, the role of dialogue and whether it may represent the characters speaking directly to the reader rather than through the narrator. I don’t wish to dodge this, but I’m not sure that Normal People is a clear example, so I will postpone the matter. (Yay!) Thematically, Normal People is a lot about sex and social cla

We’ve talked about how, at times, the locus of narration in Normal People can be hard to determine. That first sentence, “Marianne answers the door when Connell rings the bell,” could be the narrator’s perspective reporting about Connell, or about Marianne’s perspective. It’s ambiguous, and I believe it’s deliberate. Because the two characters are so intimate, their perspectives blur. But, as the first chapter develops, it becomes clearer that it’s from Connell’s perspective.

This week, let’s look more closely at the role of the narrator in Normal People. A definition, please. A person who narrates something, especially a character who recounts the events of a novel. So, the narrator entity tells the story, right? I’m afraid it’s more complicated. Are we going down the rabbit hole? Hang on. Long time readers of this blog will recall that I like to make a distinction between the real author of a story, the implied author, the narrator, and the prot

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 that indicates the story will continue. One of the chief ways the author gives this effect is in the use of time. Time is handled in an interesting and skillful fashion. The reader notices right away that each chapter of the story is identified by a reference to a date and period of time. Thus, the first chapter is “January 2011,” the second

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 characters, Marianne and Connell, and is told by an unnamed narrator in intriguing and adept fashion, a narrator who is able to whiz around and get inside all the characters’ heads. This busy and dare we say omniscient narrator entity however, is not an “I” in the story. It is not a character narrator as we have encountered before, actually

This week, a new story, my friends, Irish author Sally Rooney’s 2018 novel, Normal People. Normal People was a bestseller in the United States and won critical acclaim, including being longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. Set in Ireland during the post 2008 economic downturn, it concerns two young Irish folk, Marianne Sheridan and Connell Waldron, and their relationship over time as friends and lovers. An Emmy nominated television adaption of the book aired in 2020. Afte

Last week, due to constraints of space and time, we interrupted our discussion of Cellists, the last story in Nocturnes. Let’s continue where we left off. In September, Mr. Kaufman says there’s an opening at a hotel in Amsterdam for a cellist, with “light housekeeping duties.” Tibor asks for a couple of days to decide. His hesitation makes the fellas in the band angry. “That woman’s turned him into an arrogant little shit.” So the fellas are perhaps jealous/envious. They thin

In Cellists, the fifth and final story in Nocturnes, we return to the city of Venice but with new characters. The complex narrative structure involves the story of a young musician, Tibor, told by a first-person narrator, another musician who is an unnamed saxophonist, although it could be someone who played with Jan in Crooners. It begins with the narrator telling a story about how he was performing in the piazza and saw a man whom he recognized from seven years earlier, Tib

The fourth story in Nocturnes is entitled Nocturne and is the longest of the five contained therein. Does this have meaning? I don’t know, my friend. I don't know. Some things don’t. Nocturne concerns a first-person narrator, Steve, who is a professional saxophone player, which satisfies at least two of the requirements for stories in this book—that they present first-person narrators who are musicians. Steve tells a story to his narratee that begins: “Until two days ago, Lin

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 in London, and all in all, even if I hadn’t achieved everything I’d set out to, it had been an exciting interlude.” We learn that this fellow feels the weeks are “slipping by” and that he’s “vaguely paranoid about running into his former university friends, asking “how I was getting on since leaving the course to seek “fame and fortune”…with

The title of the next story in Nocturnes contains another musical reference, Come Rain or Come Shine, the title of a famous American song standard. It is narrated by Ray, who, like Jan in Crooner, is someone living abroad, away from England, his country of birth. The story continues to incorporate motifs of music, evening, immigration, and portals. It begins with Ray describing how he’d become close with a couple, Emily and Charlie, in university days, apparently twenty-five

Last week, we began to look at Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes, specifically the first tale, Crooner. I cut the diamond in stating that I thought the narrator, Jan, was underreading vs. underreporting. Let’s look at this more closely. (whiny voice: Why is this even important?) For a deeper understanding of the story. Please settle down. James Phelan talks about this distinction in depth. To review, underreporting is when a character narrator does not admit to his narratee what bot