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A Narrow Time
- GenresFiction
227 pages, Paperback
First published November 12, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 9, 2015
Totally shocked Ashley Judd hasn't adapted this into a CBS miniseries yet.
A Narrow Time: the lovechild of Patricia Cornwell and Alice Munro. With trippy, confusing cover art too!
Narration from a wounded mother that made me think of early stage Joy Williams? Check.
Youngest child as Buddha-like vessel of everyday wisdom? Bingo.
Plot points as character back story that slowly ramp up the narrative tension? Sure.
And then I got to the last 30 pages and I was like, dude have you ever actually read a Patricia Cornwell book before? I haven't either but my mom says they're really intense.
Seriously, tho, that cover. Why is Sarah at the Berlin Wall? And why is there a naked tree behind her? But I gotta say I love her pink overalls.
A Narrow Time: the lovechild of Patricia Cornwell and Alice Munro. With trippy, confusing cover art too!
Narration from a wounded mother that made me think of early stage Joy Williams? Check.
Youngest child as Buddha-like vessel of everyday wisdom? Bingo.
Plot points as character back story that slowly ramp up the narrative tension? Sure.
And then I got to the last 30 pages and I was like, dude have you ever actually read a Patricia Cornwell book before? I haven't either but my mom says they're really intense.
Seriously, tho, that cover. Why is Sarah at the Berlin Wall? And why is there a naked tree behind her? But I gotta say I love her pink overalls.
July 27, 2020
"All of this provided an endless source of amusement, and not least of all for Ted, who considered Sarah's girlish longings to be a sort of judgment on me. She was funny, in fact, often absolutely hilarious, as is any child with particular longings that circumvent both instinct and impulse and manifest themselves as palpable desires.
An impulse to join a Brownie troop can be dissuaded or subverted. But what lengths are justified in the disruption of a pure and almost holy desire to don a brown cap and learn to tie knots? This was Sarah's unwitting strength, of course. In a child, such a disproportion between desire and object is, at best, endearing; even at its worst, it is endurable. But from an adult, a violent and sustained attack on the Brownies is always ridiculous, ineluctably cruel, inevitably impossible" (19).
"Instead of dashing off to Saint Cecilia's, I dressed and returned to the kitchen to wash the breakfast dishes. Someone has to do this: the ancient bray of the laborer whose dignity has been traded for security or for peaceable relations--or just to avoid becoming someone rather than the one who has to do such things" (167).
An impulse to join a Brownie troop can be dissuaded or subverted. But what lengths are justified in the disruption of a pure and almost holy desire to don a brown cap and learn to tie knots? This was Sarah's unwitting strength, of course. In a child, such a disproportion between desire and object is, at best, endearing; even at its worst, it is endurable. But from an adult, a violent and sustained attack on the Brownies is always ridiculous, ineluctably cruel, inevitably impossible" (19).
"Instead of dashing off to Saint Cecilia's, I dressed and returned to the kitchen to wash the breakfast dishes. Someone has to do this: the ancient bray of the laborer whose dignity has been traded for security or for peaceable relations--or just to avoid becoming someone rather than the one who has to do such things" (167).
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews