narration

The technique of “Train Dreams”—the stylized juxtaposition of images and narration, the kaleidoscopic jumble of anxious memories and pastoral portraits—is not the stuff of an Old West parable.

In her opening narration, Farsi explains how she’d been looking for a way into Gaza to understand it beyond the media reports.

Instead, the narration jumps forward, flashes back and stalls, for brief periods, in the capricious memory of the narrator, John Dowell.

Whether this is a flaw is up to you, but Smith’s opening narration provides the only backdrop or exposition we ever get in “Patti Smith: Dream of Life.”

Mr. Dyer’s droll narration might spark readers’ own distant recollections.