<DIV><DIV>Fiction imagines for us a stopping point from which life can be seen as intelligible,” asserts Joan Silber in <I>The Art of Time in Fiction</I>. 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 examples from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chinua Achebe, and Arundhati Roy, among others, 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.</DIV></DIV>