Speaking about the theme and the structure

Speaking about the author and some aspects of his literary work

1) This writer is an Australian, and this story captures a region and a situation which most British readers will never experience in “real life”. Yet a reader can gain exciting and valuable experience from fiction, if it is well written; and the precision and vividness of this story make it disturbingly real.

2) Interested in stories of everyday characters, the writer achieved success with

his extensive use of colloquialism.

3) The writer is a leading author with a good eye for adventure and a brilliant, elusive drawing style concentrating on the essentials of line and form, leaving readers to provide the rest from their own imaginations.

4) In his different novels the writer describes and attacks many kinds of unpleasant people and places.

5) This writer’s humour often has its serious implications, but is always amiable and sympathetic.

Speaking about the theme and the structure

6) This is very simple writing. Some other stories in this book use words in bold, extraordinary ways, to awaken a rich, even confused response on several levels; and that can be very exciting. But here (in this story) this writer doesn’t want to confuse or bewitch us; the language is as dear and controlled as possible, to let the story speak for itself.

7) Although the writer was presenting new ideas about people and society, the form of the novel that he used followed the traditional pattern.

8) This is a carefully written story and the reader should not let its simplicity deceive him. The shuffling, broken way in which the protagonist and the people he meets, think and speak and move, is captured very closely, and it becomes the way in which the whole story is expressed.

9) In the extract dark irony and mordant wit are used to treat the ebb and flow of human relationships, often simple enough in themselves but made monumental by the economies of the writer’s language.

10) The text is pervaded with tragic gloom, poetic lyricism and sarcastic irony.

2. Analyze the following:

1) “A Bruise upon a Bruise” (by G. Swift “Waterland”)

…“He turned his face to me; a long potato-coloured face, with a heavy jaw and a slack mouth which hung invariably open, emitting a thin, unconscious wheeze. His eyelids flickered. When Dick was moved, only his eyelids showed it. The eyelids alone registered emotion.But although they regis­tered emotion it was impossible to tell merelyfrom their movement what emotion was being signalled. “F-Freddie Parr. Dead. D-dead Freddie. Deddie Freddie.”

2) “An ideal family” (by Katherine Mansfield)

…“Perhaps, he thought vaguely, he had been asleep for a long time. He'd been forgotten. What had all this to do with him – this house and Charlotte, the girls and Harold – what did he know about them? They were strangers to him. Life had passed him by. Charlotte was not his wife. His wife!”

3) “About a boy” (by Nick Hornby)

… “So, there it was then: an enormous, happy, extended family. True, this happy family included an invisible two-year-old, a barmy twelve-year-old and his suicidal mother; but sod’s law dictated that this was just the sort of family you were bound to end up with when you didn't like families in the first place.”

4) “Sons and Lovers” (by D. H. Lawrence)

…“You know,” she said, “I think we ought to be married.”

He opened his eyes for the first time since many months, and attended to her with respect.

“Why?” he said.

“See,” she said, “how you waste yourself! You might be ill, you might die, and I never know – be no more then than if I had never known you.”

“And if we married?” he asked.

“At any rate, I could prevent you wasting yourself and being a prey to other women – like – like Clara.”

“A prey?” he repeated, smiling.”

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