String of Time

Irma Chilton

Published by MacMillan, 1973

About this Item

String of Time (1973) by Irma Chilton ? Macmillan ISBN: None (because 1973 assumed you?d find the book by looking at the shelf, not interrogating a database) Condition: Good (as sold by Crappy Old Books , specialists in books that have quietly watched decades go by) Some books shout. Some books sparkle. String of Time does that far more dangerous thing: it slips in gently , sits down beside you, and starts quietly unpicking how a life is made?thread by thread?until you realise you?ve been thinking about it for days. Irma Chilton?s title is doing a lot of work here, and it knows it. A ?string? suggests something you can hold, something simple, something you might tie a knot in and keep. But time, of course, is not cooperative like that. Time frays. Time tangles. Time pulls tight when you least expect it, and occasionally it snaps?leaving you holding a loose end and pretending you?re fine. This is a 1973 Macmillan novel that comes from that wonderfully particular era when fiction could be thoughtful without being flashy, emotional without being syrupy, and quietly devastating without needing to announce itself with a gimmick. It has that mid-century-to-early-70s literary confidence: the assumption that readers are willing to pay attention, to follow the weave, to sit with nuance. In other words, it?s the opposite of being shouted at. If you like novels that deal in memory, change, family gravity, the way ordinary days become significant only later?this is the sort of book that rewards you. It?s less about big headline events and more about the accumulation: the small decisions, the moments that seemed trivial at the time, the conversations you don?t realise were turning points until years afterward. Chilton?s strength is in that quiet calibration of feeling: the emotional weather, the half-said things, the way a past can haunt not by being dramatic but by being persistent. And the irony is: a book about time from 1973 is now, itself, a time object. It?s carrying its own atmosphere?its assumptions, its cadence, its era?like a scent trapped in paper. Reading it now is a bit like opening a drawer and finding an old photograph you don?t remember taking: familiar somehow, but from a world with different light. This copy is listed as Good , as sold by Crappy Old Books , which means it?s solid, readable, and only gently worn by existence . Expect the usual honest patina: perhaps a touch of shelf wear, maybe pages slightly toned, that quietly reassuring sense that it has been held and read before without disintegrating into nostalgia. It?s a book that has had time. Convenient. Buy it if you like: reflective novels that feel intimate rather than loud stories where the real drama is what?s remembered and what isn?t that 1970s literary mood: calm voice, sharp insight books that make you pause mid-page and stare at nothing for a bit String of Time : a thoughtful, quietly haunting novel with a title that doubles as a warning. In Good condition from Crappy Old Books?ready to be read slowly, like you?re tracing a thread and seeing where it leads.

Seller Inventory # 5231

Bibliographic Details

• Title: String of Time
• Publisher: MacMillan
• Publication Date: 1973
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Good