The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as It Takes

Fiction imagines for us a stopping point from which life can be seen as intelligible,' asserts Joan Silber in The Art of Time in Fiction. The end point of a story determines its meaning and one of the main tasks a writer faces is to define the duration of a plot. Silber uses wide-ranging sources, from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Chinua Achebe and Arundhati Roy to illustrate five key ways in which time unfolds in fiction. In clear-eyed prose, Silber elucidates a tricky but vital aspect of the art of fiction.'