Always: Time Will Bring Their Hour
| Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Always: Time Will Bring Their Hour |
| Author(s): | kenazfiction |
| Date(s): | 25 December 2007 |
| Length: | 3769 words |
| Genre(s): | missing scene |
| Fandom(s): | Mary Renault |
| Relationship(s): | |
| External Links: | archived on Yuletide, archived on LJ |
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Always: Time Will Bring Their Hour is a short story by Kenaz (aka kenazfiction) based on Mary Renault's 1953 novel The Charioteer. It fills in events that, in one form or another, presumably must have taken place prior to one of the scenes in the book.
In Kenaz's story, Alec Deacon, having heard of Bim's death in the Battle of Britain, goes back to the flat he shares with Sandy to break the bad news.
Background
"Always: Time Will Bring Their Hour" was written for athousandwinds in the Yuletide 2007 Challenge, and beta'ed by lorie945. It was subsequently posted to LiveJournal on 3 January 2008. The story is headed with a quotation from W. H. Auden's Song III ("June 1935") in Twelve Songs.
According to the author:
This is the first time I've ever made a conscious and dedicated attempt to emulate the voice of an author, and I think the reason I'm as proud of this fic as I am is because I think I really have made it sound plausibly "Renaultesque." I know it seems quite obvious, but never having done it, I think I imagined writing in-the-style-of would be much easier than it actually was. I dithered over the exact placement of words, I went back and forth over character actions and reactions... I got a bit obsessive about it, really [...]— kenazfiction in response to a comment on LiveJournal[1]
Comments
The story elicited favourable response from several people who had not previously read The Charioteer (and were promptly encouraged to do so). Other comments included:
- "I've never been a particular fan of Sandy, but came to see him in a whole new light here. " — comment by trueriver
- "You say that you obsessed over words and word-placement and it was definitely worth the effort: if only this standard of fan fiction writing was universal." — comment by mwrgana
- "Completely true to canon, sensitively written - quite superb." — comment by fawatson