How is it that I had never heard of this author before reading this book? This was a compelling, insightful and slightly mysterious story that has left me full of thoughts. I would love to read more by William Maxwell. ( )

Story set in Draperville, Illinois 1912. An unhappily married couple with one child and a sort of cousin who is most annoying. The Bridge club adds their 2 cents. The best intentions can have devastating consequences. ( )

Amazing but unsettling. The dangers of trying to appear to be too good ( )

Liked it, but I did lose track of people and events occasionally. My fault because I couldn't read large chunks at a time.
Funny, though ... if someone asked me now, four weeks after finishing the novel, what it was about, the best I could say would be "family saga." So does that mean it was an occupying read but not a memorable one?
Among the passages I marked that I liked were these:
It is a common delusion of gentle people that the world is also gentle, considerate and fair. Cruelty and suspicion find them eternally unprepared. The surprise, the sense of shock, paralyses them for too long a time after the unprovoked insult has been given. When they finally react and are able to raise their fists in their own defense, it is already too late.
...
(The waitress) was tired and her feet hurt. From years of watching people cut up their food and put it away, a mouthful at a time, she had contracted a hatred of the human race (and of traveling salesmen in particular) that was like a continual low-grade fever.
...
If there is no such place as Purgatory, there is at least Elm Street on a grey day in January. ( )

We have here a lovely portrait of a youngish middle class couple in a small town in Illinois in 1912. Social customs are observed, racial lines are respected, and the differences between men and women are poignant and quietly, patiently tragic.

Remember: Your great-grandparents, and their parents, too, were once young and full of ideals and energy. They didn't always fall in love with the right people. They didn't always love the people they married. Sometimes, they wished they'd made other choices. William Maxwell writes for a modern 1948 audience -- but he is SUCH a gifted writer and keen observer that the work might have been written yesterday.

This is a lovely book for a hot August day in Illinois, on a screened porch with an iced tea at hand. Perhaps a Boston fern or two to muffle the keening of the locusts. ( )

Here's a bit more than a trifle, a time capsule from 1948. The use of several racial slurs, spoken by Mississippi cousins, is disturbing and almost made me toss the novel in disgust. The author is revered for not only his writing, but for his 40 year stint as fiction editor at The New Yorker, through 1968 - which mean he shaped much of the fiction we were all exposed to during those years. The redemption of this novel is Maxwell's sensitive handling of a difficult marriage in overly involved Drapersville, a Midwestern small town, and his sensitive and loving portraits of neighbors and friends.

Quote: "Women are never ready to let go of love at the point where men are satisfied and able to turn to something else." ( )

A magisterially subtle book that says a lot about America, and families, and love, in the story of a family visit from post Civil War south to the emancipated north.

In the end, I was a little bit surprised how much I enjoyed this book. I thought I would like it, but I didn't expect to treat it as a page-turner, and that's more or less how it went. You could see and taste the town in the descriptions and the characters—Austin, Martha, Nora and others—were interestingly flawed. ( )

I loved Time Will Darken It and think it’s one of the best novels I’ve ever read. The book is set in Illinois in 1912, and is about the marriage of Austin and Martha King. It begins when Austin’s cousins, Mr and Mrs Potter and their adult children Nora and Randolph, arrive from Mississippi for an extended stay. It is clear from the start that Austin and Martha don’t really want the visit to take place; Austin has invited them ‘in order to pay off an old debt that someone else had contracted’ and Martha, who has just found out she is pregnant, is angry with Austin for inviting them. Many characters in the book allow themselves to be influenced by other people and Austin especially is dutiful and reliable, wanting to be good and to think of himself as ‘a good man’ more than anything else, but there are destructive consequences to this way of living. The cousins’ visit has very negative effects on Austin’s marriage and his reputation in the town, starting when Nora falls in love with Austin.

In addition to the main storyline, there are vignettes, almost like short stories in their own right, about the lives of the Kings’ neighbours, friends and colleagues. The novel’s title comes from a book about landscape painting and it does very much take a wide view that encompasses the whole town. There are many interesting characters but the character I liked the best was probably Martha. She is very insecure as the book opens but she is more of a free spirit than Austin, and I felt sorry for her as her marriage began to go wrong. Nora is a complicated character; I partly sympathised with her as she is a thoughtful, intelligent, adventurous person who doesn’t really fit in with the rest of her family and yearns for a different kind of life. However, she can be quite irritating at times, and almost deliberately innocent, as she doesn’t seem to realise the effects her actions have on Austin and Martha. The story of the Beach girls is a very powerful part of the novel, and it is painful to see how the sisters’ lives were controlled. The book also takes a look through the ‘great pane of glass, opaque from one side, transparent from the other’ that divides the street, between the comfortable houses at the top and the shabby neighbourhood in which the Kings’ cook, Rachel, lives. The story of Rachel, her children and her violent husband is also woven into the novel.

When something is as engrossing as Time Will Darken It, I almost don’t know where to start in describing it. One thing I do like about William Maxwell’s writing is his incredible insight into people and their inner lives. He can write dialogue that is full of hidden meaning, that says more than it appears to on the surface, and that reveals so much about the character who is speaking, and their relationships with the people around them. He presents individual scenes, one after another, some momentous and some inconsequential, not directly telling us what the characters are like, but allowing us to eavesdrop and form our own conclusions. I also like the way he can create a whole cast of plausible and complex characters, so that you see the world from multiple angles, a world that you almost live in yourself during the time you’re reading the novel. I liked the way the town and its characters came to life, as a sepia-tinted photograph does. There is an old-fashioned, autumnal feel to this novel. I suppose I am hoping to be transported when I read, and this novel definitely did that for me. It’s not just a form of escapism though as I think the ideas he writes about are ones that are very important to me and probably to many people reading his novels, questions like what is the best way to live your life, and how people try to become independent and free. He expresses the pain that comes from feeling constricted and powerless, from loneliness and love that ends in disaster. The way in which the opinions and personalities of other, more powerful people (family, employers, neighbours) influence the protagonists’ lives is also moving to read about. [2011] ( )

Two families, the one from the South visits the one in the North. America before the Great War, class divides, manners, family duty, the race question and, beneath the politeness, love is turbulent. I don’t know why I have never discovered William Maxwell’s books before now, but I will certainly seek out his others.
Draperville, Illinois, is the setting for this observation of manners which at times reminded me of Austen. Draperville is based on Maxwell’s own hometown of Lincoln, Illinois. In 1912, the Potter family from Mississippi visit the family of their foster son. Austin King, lawyer in Draperville, struggles to live up to the reputation of his father Judge King. The interaction and resulting effects of the King and Potter families over four weeks and three days, is detailed in a way reminiscent of Austen. And the detail is fascinating. The interaction between the generations, the expectations of the men and women, norms of behaviour and what happens when those norms are broken. This pre-war period teeters on the verge of war, and all the changes that will soon be brought about.
This is a wise book about relationships and how one’s own self-perspective, and that of your parents, changes over time and with experience. “…the history of one’s parents has to be pieced together from fragments, their motives and character guessed at, and the truth about them remains deeply buried, like a boulder that projects one small surface above the level of smooth lawn, and when you come to dig around it, proves to be too large ever to move, though each year’s frost forces it up a little higher.”
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/ ( )

This was a beautifully written book and one of my favorites. The writing is sparse and the characters are beautifully drawn. I was really sorry when the book ended. I wanted to go back in time and live in this neighborhood. This is a book I WILL read again. ( )

This was a beautifully written book and one of my favorites. The writing is sparse and the characters are beautifully drawn. I was really sorry when the book ended. I wanted to go back in time and live in this neighborhood. This is a book I WILL read again. ( )

A brilliant evocation of the complexity of life and the fragility of happiness. ( )

This is the second William Maxwell book I have read this year and it is just wonderful. Reminds me a bit of Winesburg, Ohio and the novels of Sinclair Lewis. It's a book about small town life in Illinois just prior to World War I. I am about two thirds of the way through right now. I am amazed that I am just learning of William Maxwell, because from what I have read so far he ranks with the best American authors of the 20th century. ( )

This is a wonderful book by a great author whom I feel has not received the recognition he deserves. Although perhaps best known for the award winning So Long, See You Tomorrow, Maxwell's masterpiece may be this novel about the effect a visiting set of relatives has on a family, their friends and neighbors. Maxwell is a master at creating characters, both male and female. He also has a deft hand in placing these characters in a certain time and place. I felt I could walk through the door of the King house on Elm Street in 1912 to enjoy the buffet supper and be a first hand observer of how the Southern relatives begin to charm the natives of Draperville, a small city in the midwwest. Highly recommend. ( )

Set in the early part of the twentieth century, this is the story of a man who unwittingly unleashes devastating results on his personal and professional life. When the Potters, who are very, very distantly related to Austin King, invite themselves to travel from Mississippi to Illinois to visit the King family for an extended stay, he reluctantly agrees. William Maxwell is able to portray the characters and the subtle plot development with the clarity that defines his skill as a writer. The ending is haunting. ( )

Here is a book that is as near perfection as it is possible for a novel to be ... quote fromk unknown source in Amazon. I AGREE! ( )