He Said, She Said: Free Direct Speech

For this exercise I'm stealing a passage from John Mullan's analysis of Jonathan Safran Foer's novel Everything is Illuminated, which was part of Mullan's 2005 "Elements of Fiction" series in "The Guardian": 

Mullan's article continues (you can read the rest of it here).

Although these days, free direct speech is apparently "only proper if we are to listen to something truly incomprehensible", I'd like to try using the technique to stretch and strengthen those (my) flabby dialogue-writing muscles a bit.

· John Mullan is senior lecturer in English at University College London. Read his archived pieces and respond to them at http://books.guardian.co.uk/elements/0,,1427415,00.html