In his third novel, Boyle focuses primarily on the inhabitants of a part of New York’s Hudson River valley, though the setting does shift to Jamestown in western New York, and to Barrow, Alaska. More specifically, most of the action occurs in or around the town of Peterskill, New York, which seems to be a thinly fictionalised version of Boyle’s hometown of Peekskill, New York. The novel does, however, shift repeatedly between several times periods--primarily the late 1960s and the last four decades of the 17th century, but with some sections more selectively treating the period between 1920 and 1950. About two-thirds of the novel’s three dozen chapters are devoted to the events in the late 1960s, about a half-dozen are devoted to the events in the second half of the 17th century,…
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Citation: Kich, Martin. "World's End". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 May 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=41632, accessed 08 September 2024.]