It Is Time, Lord (Voices of the South) [Paperback]

Fred Chappell (Author)

Book Description

Series: Voices of the South | Publication Date: October 1996

James Christopher—book editor, husband, and father of two—is headed for trouble. Once a North Carolina farm boy who grew up hoeing, fighting, and listening to his grandmother read from the Bible, James resigns from his job for no apparent reason, drinks too much, fails in his attempt to take up writing, and, following the advice of a skirt-chasing rogue, has an affair with a woman he dislikes. Daring to recall the events of his childhood, especially the fire that destroyed his grandparents’ home, James, obsessed with his past and its deception, struggles to truly understand his history and its influence on the man he has become. BOSON BOOKS also offers Dagon and The Inkling by Fred Chappell.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 183 pages
• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr (October 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807121193
• ISBN-13: 978-0807121191
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,583,923 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Tarheel Stephen Daedulus, June 11, 2002

By 

Randall Ivey "Randall" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: It Is Time, Lord (Voices of the South) (Paperback)

Chappell's first novel belies the author's age. He was a mere twenty six years old when IT IS TIME, LORD was published. One thinks of Hemingway, also twenty-six when THE SUN ALSO RISES was published, and the energy and mastery of technique he evinced early on.

A better analogy, though, would probably be James Joyce, whose PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, provides clear correlations with Chappell's novel. Both are concerned with young artists, writers, struggling to come to terms with the weight of their pasts and in those attempts trying to turn experience into art. Each youth labors under the shadow of a forceful, not always sympathetic father.

Chappell does something here, way back in 1963, that not many other subsequent novelists have been able to do, at least not in my estimation, and that is to justify use of the present tense narrative form. Too many writers today use the technique as a showy gimmick, but Chappell is not playing around here. The present tense narrative of James Christopher's dissolute present life is starkly contrasted with his rural upbringing, told in the form of an aborted memoir, but in each we can see the seeds of James's self-destruction.

IT IS TIME, LORD also plants the seeds for Chappell's later quartet of autobiographical novels beginning with I AM ONE OF YOU FOREVER and recently concluding with LOOK BACK ALL THE GREEN VALLEY, and this first novel makes for a compelling warm up for those fine books.