The performers assemble in a filmed introduction loaded with enough mysterious actions and symbols to inspire all manner of narrative possibilities.
Winding through all parts of the Castle, the path to the Forbidden Journey passes all manner of narrative touchstones, beginning with the Mirror of Erised.
That appears to be the real primary motivation for the creators of, and potential audience for, the new Freeform series "Guilt," a silly and sexed-up murder mystery in which all manner of narrative flaws are "solved" with a quick cut to the London Eye or the Houses of Parliament.
From her debut novel, "The Icarus Girl," through 2012's "Mr. Fox," Oyeyemi has drawn on mythology, fairy tales, the gothic and all manner of supernatural narrative traditions to get at the place where individual psychology collides with culture.
The additional expressions -- God made the firmament -- God made the beast of the earth, &c., occur subordinately, and only in a few instances; they do not necessarily convey a different idea of the mode of creation, and indeed only appear as alternative phrases, in the usual duplicative manner of Eastern narrative.
What we have here, obviously, is a quest narrative, and in the manner of quest narratives in these post-Potter, post-Skywalker days, this one is stitched together from pieces of earlier quests.
Weschler is a master of narrative nonfiction.
Caitlin Cunningham is a master of narrative.
But each character is cleanly drawn, each description rings true – as it does in the next story, "What time is it now, where you are?", which plays in postmodern manner with the construction of narrative itself.
Here, as WW Norton identifies, Kipling "brought to its strange perfection that narrative manner of implication, abstention, and obliquity of which the first considerable example is Mrs Bathurst".
People in her circumstances have their world suddenly inverted, and there is nothing in the manner of their taking – no narrative of sacrifice, or enduring for a greater good – to help them derive meaning from it.
