A good book beginning; clocks and time

I've started The Dubious Hills by pameladean , and even just a few pages in, I find it wonderful in ways that are difficult to articulate. There's the intimate scope: the focal character, Arry, lives in a very small community, where everyone has been intimately connected all her life. Partly it's the small details of that life--milk spilled on the floor for cats to lap up, hair cut to get rid of burrs (a necessity I remember from my own childhood). But a bigger reason is the way people underst...