Jovial and Whimsical Tone

Haha, just kidding.

"Cars slushed by on the street outside, where it was getting dark. But it was getting dark on the inside, too" ("Popular Mechanics," 1).

The setting in the story is very vague -- first, the characters were "in the bedroom" (2), and then they moved "into the kitchen" (19). Other than that, there are few concrete details in the setting.

What we know from the first paragraph is the weather outside and its relationship with the moods of the characters in the story. The snow was "melting into dirty water," and the darkness outside reflected the darkness "on the inside" of the characters. The darkness shows up again when the kitchen window gives "no light" (31). That dark and dreary setting sets a gloomy atmosphere of the story. Certainly, the darkness also lives within the characters due to their actions (particularly at the end -- I can't say what happened specifically, but I'm pretty sure that baby is a goner).

There is one more setting detail. The beginning of the story is in the bedroom, but when the male character moves toward the female, she takes "a step back into the kitchen" (19). That little move -- that tiny shift in setting -- was kind of a defensive move, and it foreshadowed the escalation of their argument over the baby.

Additionally, I've been informed that "Popular Mechanics" is the name of a magazine, which I didn't know. My initial reaction to the title was that it meant "things that people do on a regular basis." If that's the case, then the title applies this story to life in general, and it becomes an allegory for any kind of conflict in which an issue is decided suddenly without thinking of consequences.

Serial commas: you should use them.

"I only have the one vague memory of Ruth from that early part of our lives.

I'm playing in a sandpit. There are a number of others in the sand with me, it's too crowded and we're getting irritated with each other" (Never Let Me Go, 45).

Now that I've read four chapters, I'm going to talk about Kazuo Ishiguro's style.

With the exception of dialogue, most of the narration is written in compound or complex (or both) sentences. I appreciate that, but I don't appreciate that he doesn't use the Oxford comma. That disturbs the force.¹

The tone of the book has been more conversational than I'm used to. The author isn't afraid of second person point of view, and Kathy refers to herself and the reader as "we" sometimes. It's a better way to connect with the audience, I think. Probably also for that purpose, there are a lot of dead metaphors -- "in hot water" (44), for example.

The excerpt at the beginning of this post confuses me, though. Why introduce a memory as distant and vague and then switch to the present tense? Usually the present tense makes things more tangible and real. So that's a legitimate question I have.

¹I'm seriously serious about this. Just look at the last sentence of the quote at the top of my post -- it almost looks like a comma splice. But noooo, some people just won't use a serial comma. I can sometimes understand it when the list is just of single words, but that sentence would have been ten times easier to read with the Oxford comma. I feel very strongly about this.