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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...
Alan Bray
- Jan 5
- 4 min
Crisis? What Crisis?
In Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled, just who are those who are unconsoled? The definition of the word “unconsoled” is a person or group...
Alan Bray
- Dec 29, 2022
- 3 min
What A Character!
My friends, what of the narrational style of The Unconsoled? After all, that’s what I typically write about. Most simply put, Unconsoled...
Alan Bray
- Dec 22, 2022
- 4 min
The Unconsoled
This week, a new story, best beloved, Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1995 novel, The Unconsoled. It is, essentially, the story of a concert pianist,...
Alan Bray
- Mar 17, 2022
- 4 min
Nocturnal Progression
Last week, due to constraints of space and time, we interrupted our discussion of Cellists, the last story in Nocturnes. Let’s continue...
Alan Bray
- Mar 10, 2022
- 5 min
The Fellas In The Band Observe A Flirty Actress
In Cellists, the fifth and final story in Nocturnes, we return to the city of Venice but with new characters. The complex narrative...
Alan Bray
- Mar 3, 2022
- 5 min
You Turkey
The fourth story in Nocturnes is entitled Nocturne and is the longest of the five contained therein. Does this have meaning? I don’t...
Alan Bray
- Feb 24, 2022
- 4 min
You Talkin' To Me?
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...
Alan Bray
- Feb 17, 2022
- 5 min
The Band Played On
The title of the next story in Nocturnes contains another musical reference, Come Rain or Come Shine, the title of a famous American song...
Alan Bray
- Feb 10, 2022
- 4 min
Lost Illusions
Last week, we began to look at Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes, specifically the first tale, Crooner. I cut the diamond in stating that I...
Alan Bray
- Feb 3, 2022
- 6 min
Nocturnes
This week a new book, Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2009 Nocturnes, originally published in Britain and then by American publisher Knopf in the same...
Alan Bray
- Apr 29, 2021
- 6 min
Time Travel
The last chapter of Remains is entitled Weymouth. It begins with Mr. Stevens sitting on a pier, or boardwalk, by the sea, waiting for the...
Alan Bray
- Apr 22, 2021
- 4 min
Mr. Stevens and St. Peter
Although Mr. Stevens spends considerable time reflecting on the past during his journey, he is at times confronted by people from the...
Alan Bray
- Apr 8, 2021
- 4 min
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, 2021
- 3 min
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, 2021
- 4 min
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, 2021
- 4 min
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...