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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

This week a new book, Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2009 Nocturnes, originally published in Britain and then by American publisher Knopf in the same year. It is dedicated to Deborah Rogers, Ishiguro’s long time literary agent. Nocturnes is a collection of five stories that Ishiguro himself has said were conceived of as a whole, like a piece of music with five movements. It is not a short story collection, as, to Ishiguro, a short story is complete unto itself, and these tales are not. Ind

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 his desolated heart trying to physically confront him. It is a painful transformation the story describes; it’s not as if, in the end, Kino becomes supremely happy running his little bar and listening to American jazz records, all conflicts settled. No, he winds up cowering in a bed in a seedy hotel. He’s in pain but it’s genuine pain, unl

Kino sets off, leaving a note that the bar will be closed till further notice. He stays at a hotel, goes to the movies, hires a prostitute, all the while pondering Mr. Kamita’s message. As per Mr. Kamita’s instructions, he sends his aunt a postcard with no identifying information. What had he not done that had caused such a serious problem? Hmmm. He feels increasingly alienated, watching office workers all day from his hotel window, mystified by their seemingly meaningful liv

When we last left Kino, he’d just had the encounter with the woman burned by cigarettes and was shown feeling ambivalently about her. Ambivalent—please note that word as it will reoccur. The next scene after a paragraph break concerns Kino’s now ex-wife coming to the bar at her initiative after the divorce has been finalized. The couple has a glass of wine, and then, “The cat padded over and, surprisingly, leaped into Kino’s lap.” This is an unusual occurrence as the cat is g

Kino’s bar is a modest success. We learn more about “the man.” “My name is Kamita,” he said. It’s written with the characters for “god” —kami—and “field” —“god’s field,” as you might expect. It’s pronounced “Kamita.” The first two paragraphs of this next section are in imperfect time that collapses four months. Then we have a specific scene. While Mr. Kamita is at the bar, two guys come in to drink expensive wine. Kino thinks they may be yakuza, gangsters. They cause a distur