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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...