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deeschell's review
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
ohhellokelli's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
lighthearted
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
pattiillbee11's review
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
My least favorite kind of novel. 90% first person narrative. I found myself skimming through page long paragraphs of characters' self reflections. The characters themselves were interesting up to a point but show me don't tell me. This novel is also a compilation of all the issues facing our country. 80% is spent on characters' backgrounds with the last 20% dealing with the actions of one character involving all the others, which was anticlimactic in my opinion.
bmoritz99's review
5.0
Will Leitch is the writer I want to be when I grow up, and books like this are why. It’s poignant, funny, filled with memorable characters and it’s a love letter to Athens, Georgia.
checkplease's review
3.0
**Goodreads Giveaway winner!**
“The Time Has Come” is a character study of 7 people living in Athens, GA in the shadow of COVID, the Jan 6th insurrection, and racial unrest. The story begins with the writings of a woman whose plotted actions are clearly meant to evoke Pizzagate, the real-life storming of a small business, who is also mentally Ill with an imagined score to settle. It then weaves together the backstories of our 7 characters, whose lives converge in that store where trouble is stirred, a pharmacy and soda shop that had belonged to one family across three generations.
This was my first book by Will Leitch, who said in an interview that the novel was inspired by the films Shortcuts and Nashville. While those movies also focus on the stories of disparate characters, their individual narrative arcs synergize into something special that is greater than the sum of its parts. Here, things never quite coalesced for me, and I was left wondering what it all added up to.
Many of the characters face (non-COVID) loss as part of their storyline, and many are fleshed out using secondary characters whose own stories become loose ends left dangling. While I don’t need resolution all the time, I did think the structure came across as too self-conscious. And I wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that the author, a White man, named the children of an older Black couple in the story after his own real-life sons.
Ultimately, I liked the story while also remaining at a distance from it. Perhaps it’s emblematic that the term mass shooting is used incorrectly in the book, as I closed it wondering what I might have missed that would have helped the novel feel a little more consequential.
“The Time Has Come” is a character study of 7 people living in Athens, GA in the shadow of COVID, the Jan 6th insurrection, and racial unrest. The story begins with the writings of a woman whose plotted actions are clearly meant to evoke Pizzagate, the real-life storming of a small business, who is also mentally Ill with an imagined score to settle. It then weaves together the backstories of our 7 characters, whose lives converge in that store where trouble is stirred, a pharmacy and soda shop that had belonged to one family across three generations.
This was my first book by Will Leitch, who said in an interview that the novel was inspired by the films Shortcuts and Nashville. While those movies also focus on the stories of disparate characters, their individual narrative arcs synergize into something special that is greater than the sum of its parts. Here, things never quite coalesced for me, and I was left wondering what it all added up to.
Many of the characters face (non-COVID) loss as part of their storyline, and many are fleshed out using secondary characters whose own stories become loose ends left dangling. While I don’t need resolution all the time, I did think the structure came across as too self-conscious. And I wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that the author, a White man, named the children of an older Black couple in the story after his own real-life sons.
Ultimately, I liked the story while also remaining at a distance from it. Perhaps it’s emblematic that the term mass shooting is used incorrectly in the book, as I closed it wondering what I might have missed that would have helped the novel feel a little more consequential.
jkjkjk's review
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.0
If you know Athens, GA at all the references and small setting descriptions are on point and fun to find. Felt like a big piece of the plot (one of the characters motivations) was missing, but still easy to follow. Different type of read but enjoyable!
embreads98's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
I have some complaints about this book.
1) sooo much Covid/2020 election talk. Way too soon for me, if I had known I wouldn’t have picked up this book.
2) white men probably shouldn’t write from the perspective of people of color. There’s a scene where a Black activist thinks about his white friend, a man who does the bare minimum to soothe his white guilt, and concludes that even the bare minimum is important in the face of all the hatred. That revelation felt like such a white perspective that I looked up the race of the author at that point. I would suggest the author read MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham City Jail” and rethink his stance on the value of the white moderate.
3) there were so. Many. Damn. Characters. Too many storylines to get invested in them all and it took way too long for them all to converge and then when they did it was barely a climax. The ending felt rushed and everything leading up to it felt unnecessarily complex.
Overall this book was a miss for me. I enjoy a story which examines humanity and our relationships to one another, but this one fell flat due to not having enough time with any one character. I didn’t connect to the cast and ultimately wasn’t invested in the outcome of their myriad storylines.
1) sooo much Covid/2020 election talk. Way too soon for me, if I had known I wouldn’t have picked up this book.
2) white men probably shouldn’t write from the perspective of people of color. There’s a scene where a Black activist thinks about his white friend, a man who does the bare minimum to soothe his white guilt, and concludes that even the bare minimum is important in the face of all the hatred. That revelation felt like such a white perspective that I looked up the race of the author at that point. I would suggest the author read MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham City Jail” and rethink his stance on the value of the white moderate.
3) there were so. Many. Damn. Characters. Too many storylines to get invested in them all and it took way too long for them all to converge and then when they did it was barely a climax. The ending felt rushed and everything leading up to it felt unnecessarily complex.
Overall this book was a miss for me. I enjoy a story which examines humanity and our relationships to one another, but this one fell flat due to not having enough time with any one character. I didn’t connect to the cast and ultimately wasn’t invested in the outcome of their myriad storylines.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse, Gun violence, Blood, Mass/school shootings, and Pandemic/Epidemic
niannarino's review
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
bethreadsandnaps's review
3.25
3.25 stars
I really enjoyed Leitch’s How Lucky. Unfortunately, this one has a completely different structure and vibe than How Lucky. There are a lot of POVs in this novel (6 or 7), and for the most part each is from a separate family in Athens, Georgia. Each has about 6 characters that are important to that person’s POV with little overlap, so there’s roughly 40 characters. With this structure, which the author likely thought was innovative and I just found frustrating, we wouldn’t know how all of these characters crossed paths until the last 20% or so.
With so many POVs and characters, I should have written a character list. I started this on one day and read one chapter from each POV. And because there’s so little overlap, I promptly forgot most of them the next time I picked up the novel. It was so hard to get centered in this book with so little overlap/connections until the end.
That said, I found a few of these characters very endearing and memorable. There were moments of humor and humanity throughout. Still, the structure and plethora of characters drove me up a wall.
And, finally, this novel reminded me of Backman’s Anxious People, which isn’t a good thing because that novel was a miss for me.
I really enjoyed Leitch’s How Lucky. Unfortunately, this one has a completely different structure and vibe than How Lucky. There are a lot of POVs in this novel (6 or 7), and for the most part each is from a separate family in Athens, Georgia. Each has about 6 characters that are important to that person’s POV with little overlap, so there’s roughly 40 characters. With this structure, which the author likely thought was innovative and I just found frustrating, we wouldn’t know how all of these characters crossed paths until the last 20% or so.
With so many POVs and characters, I should have written a character list. I started this on one day and read one chapter from each POV. And because there’s so little overlap, I promptly forgot most of them the next time I picked up the novel. It was so hard to get centered in this book with so little overlap/connections until the end.
That said, I found a few of these characters very endearing and memorable. There were moments of humor and humanity throughout. Still, the structure and plethora of characters drove me up a wall.
And, finally, this novel reminded me of Backman’s Anxious People, which isn’t a good thing because that novel was a miss for me.