Hawthorne knew, as Wineapple says, that "his strengths as a writer did not lie in consistently sustained narrative."

That genial mode falls short of the claims he makes for the book form as such: linearity, sustained narrative, cohesive argument.

Mr. Durang has generally worked better in short, explosive fragments than in sustained narratives.

But, although this book has a sustained, eventful narrative, it, like the other four, hangs its hat on sidestepping readerly expectations.

To him, movies aren't sustained narratives that build to a climax.

But Ms. Taymor's strengths have never been in strongly sustained narratives or fully developed characters.

But it is not until the second act and his consideration of crime that the play begins to have more than a thread of a sustained narrative.

For Leroy Douresseaux, the second volume "never really comes together", feeling more like "a collection of scenes" than a sustained narrative.

It is his first to have a sustained narrative.

I have never seen a sustained narrative about the Vietnam War which captures the subtle nuances of it in such clear and simple language.