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Alan Bray
- May 1, 2021
- 1 min
"Pequod" Anchors In Blue Lake
I'm pleased to announce my story "The Loss of the Whaling Ship Pequod" is now live on the Blue Lake Review site. Here's a link:...


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 15, 2021
- 4 min
Stevens the Obscure
Remains has an interesting structure. As I have said, the novel is broken up into a prologue and seven chapters, each one identified by a...


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...


Alan Bray
- Mar 11, 2021
- 3 min
The Perils of Smooth Jazz
One of the hallmarks of fiction, one of the things that often keeps us reading, is how the protagonist transforms in the story. Aristotle...


Alan Bray
- Mar 4, 2021
- 4 min
Unreliable and Not In Control—Bad Combination
I have written about how Pat is an unreliable narrator in Silver Linings. The unnamed narrator presents Pat’s story as a sort of journal...


Alan Bray
- Feb 25, 2021
- 4 min
I Don't Believe You
I have said that, in Silver Linings, Pat is an unreliable narrator. Let’s look at this more closely. An unreliable narrator is a narrator...

Alan Bray
- Feb 18, 2021
- 1 min
Blue Lake to Publish Pequod
I'm very pleased to announce that Blue Lake Review will publish my short story "The Loss of the Whaling Ship Pequod" in their May issue....


Alan Bray
- Feb 18, 2021
- 4 min
The Silver Linings Playbook
This week a new story, Matthew Quick’s 2008 novel, The Silver Linings Playbook. I first read the book six years ago after seeing the...


Alan Bray
- Feb 11, 2021
- 4 min
Aren't You a Little Obsessed?
What role does transformation play in Grand Central? Transformation is a key element of fiction and of memoir. “A transformation is a...


Alan Bray
- Feb 4, 2021
- 3 min
Lily Eater
Last week, I wrestled mightily with the question of whether Grand Central is a memoir or a work of fiction, deciding that the story seems...


Alan Bray
- Jan 28, 2021
- 4 min
I Remember We
‘Kay. I have said that, this week, we should examine Grand Central as a work of fiction. I felt good about the clarity, not exactly smug,...


Alan Bray
- Jan 21, 2021
- 3 min
The Thing In Itself?
A week of sleepless nights, best beloved. I’ve been struggling with Grand Central. The personal nature of the story, a possibly...


Alan Bray
- Jan 14, 2021
- 5 min
By Grand Central Station I Lay Down and Wept
A new book this week, Elizabeth Smart’s 1945 novella, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, weighing in at one-hundred and twelve...


Alan Bray
- Jan 7, 2021
- 3 min
This Is the End, My Only Friend
The ending of The Moslem Wife tells us what the story is about—the point—if you will. We talked last week about how the style of the...


Alan Bray
- Dec 31, 2020
- 4 min
Stylin’
What is the style of The Moslem Wife? By way of review, fictional style can be thought of as the implied author, an entity who mediates...