A Frank Literary Blog!

My short audio on the issue of bantering in the novel, The Remains of the Day (1989) by Kazuo Ishiguro. For Stevens bantering is a serious business. With his private self subsumed into his professional role as a butler, everything becomes a function of service - even the spontaneous conversational oil of bantering. Stevens sees it as another task to be carried out, but is bantering a craft that can be learned? For discussion groups and literary study, go to my website: frank-

My short take-away from the 1965 novel, Stoner by John Williams. William Stoner attends university to study agriculture with a view to taking over his parents' farm in the future. But a moment of epiphany when studying Shakespeare sonnet #73 changes the course of Stoner's life in ways he had never imagined. Here's a link to Shakespeare sonnet #73: http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/73.html My website: frank-foley.com

My short audio exploring the opening lines of Kazuo Ishiguro's 1989 Booker Prize winning novel, The Remains of the Day. "It seems...

My short audio on the significance of the date, July 1956, at the beginning of The Remains of the Day.

My short take-away from Atonement (2001) by Ian McEwan. Precocious teenager Briony Tallis struggles with the mysteries of the mind and experience as she tries to find the seam between her finger not moving and then moving! Here's my audio clip explaining why I love this passage! #Atonement #IanMcEwan #literature #novels

Another little literary gem for you! This one is from The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, and focuses on the moment Nick Carraway,...

(click image for audio) In a short aside in chapter 22 of Vanity Fair, the narrator tells us about a gentleman he knows who, "used to do little wrongs to his neighbours on purpose, and in order to apologize for them in an open and manly way afterwards." The result of this, the narrator continues, is that his friend is, "liked everywhere, and deemed to be rather impetuous - but the honestest fellow." Thackeray, it seems, were he alive today, would understand exactly what we