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an_enthusiastic_reader's review
5.0
I wish I'd read this book back when I was studying literature. It provides a clear explanation (with literary examples) of how writers can use the constructs of time, and would have made my own reading better. This is a wonderful use of the literary essay to help readers and writers alike.
evolvemind's review
5.0
Silber delivers a concise analysis of the variety of ways storytellers employ time to create narrative shapes and effects. She explores stories to tease out how authors effectively dealt with classic (natural), long, switchback, slowed, and fabulous time. This slim volume should be in every writer's and every serious reader's collection.
pearseanderson's review
4.0
An awesome introduction and quick overview of how time can be used in fiction. I would've appreciated for focus on techniques, with more clear takeaways that say "Oh, I'll keep that line written down beside me as I write a new slow time piece." But overall a really nice Graywolf guide.
mc_easton's review
5.0
A slender primer on how fiction employs time to make its point, Silber’s book is a rewarding and insightful read. Each chapter examines a different approach to time and its effects on short story and novel structure, character, and theme. From long time to slowed time, switchback time to fabulous time, she provides a plethora of examples drawn from Proust, García Márquez, al-Saadawi, Munro, and Baldwin. Her perceptive analyses of how authors mold time in fiction to make their points inspired me as a writer and delighted me as a reader. A volume I am sure to return to again and again.
wandering_not_lost's review
3.0
The main thing that caught me about this book was that a lot of it wasn't so much about time as it was about plot structure and not so much about plot structure as it was about focusing the reader's attention. Which it did well, discussing examples of how to deal with long stretches of time and also how you can focus attention by slowing time down. None of this was particularly new to me, but it was done well.
Also, spoiler alert, if you don't want to read a lot of synopses of tragedies befalling women, might want to skip this one. The examples given, remind me why I haven't read more "classic" literature: almost all the books mentioned were about tragedy (the author states that misspent, ruined, and unled lives are often more interesting, which ahahahahahahaahaha is not a comment that has aged well to this Plague Year, but then again, I have always found tragedy boring), and the overwhelming majority of examples are about tragedies that befall women: they drift through life powerless and miss out, they marry wrongly and are unhappy, they do not marry and are unhappy, they marry and are happy but then their husbands die and they are unhappy, they never marry and become ugly and abrasive suffragists, they die young, they are "ruined" and left in disgrace....:sigh: (This isn't the author's fault - these texts exist, but perhaps she didn't realize the common thread that leapt out from all of her examples.)
Also, spoiler alert, if you don't want to read a lot of synopses of tragedies befalling women, might want to skip this one. The examples given, remind me why I haven't read more "classic" literature: almost all the books mentioned were about tragedy (the author states that misspent, ruined, and unled lives are often more interesting, which ahahahahahahaahaha is not a comment that has aged well to this Plague Year, but then again, I have always found tragedy boring), and the overwhelming majority of examples are about tragedies that befall women: they drift through life powerless and miss out, they marry wrongly and are unhappy, they do not marry and are unhappy, they marry and are happy but then their husbands die and they are unhappy, they never marry and become ugly and abrasive suffragists, they die young, they are "ruined" and left in disgrace....:sigh: (This isn't the author's fault - these texts exist, but perhaps she didn't realize the common thread that leapt out from all of her examples.)
bibliole's review
1.0
With a little more time editing this might have been a good book, but as it stands now I didn't feel that it was worth the money that I spent on it. First of all, Sibler does not really define what she means by "time", and because of this she runs back and forwards between all sorts of definition of time in fiction which leaves the text too unstructured for my taste.
Secondly, the light she sheds on "time in fiction" struck me as very much surface level stuff, and the few times something interesting came up it was rarely expounded upon.
Also, her chapter on "Fabulous Time" was unconvincing and surprising in that it emphasized the importance of circularity in what she calls "unrealistic novels" - it's surprising to the extent that it's a pretty structuralist definition for something that is supposed to be "fabulous" and unconventional.
And lastly, some of the editing choices annoyed me. For example, the strange and recurring habit of writing: "what the Buddhist calls transience", which strikes me as such an odd thing to write since "transience" is just a plain old English word with Latin roots. If the author had written the actual word used to mean more or less "transience" in Buddhist doctrine it would have made more sense, but the way it is written makes it seem like the word "transience" itself is somehow of Buddhist origin and that the concept of something being transient is somehow unfathomable to the Anglo-American mind.
Maybe I'm a little harsh on this book because I enjoyed "The Art of Perspective" so much. It's not a bad book, and lots of people might find some use of it, but I have to give it one star because it left me disappointed.
Secondly, the light she sheds on "time in fiction" struck me as very much surface level stuff, and the few times something interesting came up it was rarely expounded upon.
Also, her chapter on "Fabulous Time" was unconvincing and surprising in that it emphasized the importance of circularity in what she calls "unrealistic novels" - it's surprising to the extent that it's a pretty structuralist definition for something that is supposed to be "fabulous" and unconventional.
And lastly, some of the editing choices annoyed me. For example, the strange and recurring habit of writing: "what the Buddhist calls transience", which strikes me as such an odd thing to write since "transience" is just a plain old English word with Latin roots. If the author had written the actual word used to mean more or less "transience" in Buddhist doctrine it would have made more sense, but the way it is written makes it seem like the word "transience" itself is somehow of Buddhist origin and that the concept of something being transient is somehow unfathomable to the Anglo-American mind.
Maybe I'm a little harsh on this book because I enjoyed "The Art of Perspective" so much. It's not a bad book, and lots of people might find some use of it, but I have to give it one star because it left me disappointed.
jenlouden's review against another edition
4.0
Short essays on how various authors have handled time. Must be read slowly.