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Alan Bray
- May 26, 2022
- 3 min
What If Thinking - Station Eleven
One of the central questions Station Eleven asks its readers is: what would you do in a world without technology? No electricity, no...
Alan Bray
- May 19, 2022
- 5 min
Station Eleven
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...
Alan Bray
- May 12, 2022
- 6 min
Finally Normal - Normal People
This week, I want to finish looking at Normal People, although this rich book could easily yield more discussion. However, certain...
Alan Bray
- May 5, 2022
- 6 min
Safe Sex - Normal People
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...
Alan Bray
- Apr 28, 2022
- 4 min
Class Dismissed - Normal People
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...
Alan Bray
- Apr 20, 2022
- 4 min
You Show Me Yours, I'll Show You Mine - Normal People
We’ve talked about how, at times, the locus of narration in Normal People can be hard to determine. That first sentence, “Marianne...
Alan Bray
- Apr 14, 2022
- 5 min
Having Fun With Reading - Normal People
This week, let’s look more closely at the role of the narrator in Normal People. A definition, please. A person who narrates something,...
Alan Bray
- Apr 7, 2022
- 3 min
Mental Time Travel - Normal People
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...
Alan Bray
- Mar 31, 2022
- 4 min
Free The Speech!
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...
Alan Bray
- Mar 24, 2022
- 4 min
Normal People
This week, a new story, my friends, Irish author Sally Rooney’s 2018 novel, Normal People. Normal People was a bestseller in the United...
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
- Jan 27, 2022
- 4 min
The Single Life
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...
Alan Bray
- Jan 20, 2022
- 4 min
The Tell-Tale Heart
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...
Alan Bray
- Jan 13, 2022
- 5 min
Snakes
When we last left Kino, he’d just had the encounter with the woman burned by cigarettes and was shown feeling ambivalently about her....