I’ve always been captivated by the idea of time travel, so I looked for recent novels, and remembered some older books, that involve moving through time. Some are science fiction, some historical fiction, and many are romance novels. Some have strict rules (“Before the Coffee Gets Cold” by Toshikazu Kawaguchi), some let the traveler be in control (“The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells), and some give the character no control (“The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger, the sequel of which just came out).
“All We Have Is Time” by Amy Tordoff is a mix of historical fiction, romance, and a bit of science fiction. In the 1400s in the tiny village of Lancaut, England, Beatrix is dying at the age of 23. She begs the faeries for more time, and her wish is granted: she will be immortal and forever young. But, the faerie tells her, “You will live to regret this.” Making her way in the world of the Middle Ages as a thief, she picks the pocket of handsome young Oliver. And then she meets him again many years later, and again, and again. Is he another immortal? No. He’s a time traveler from the 21st century. “He can appear precisely where — and when — he wants to be.” But there are rules to this time travel, so he can be with her only a few hours each time.
“Beatrix has come to think of herself as a liminal person, existing in that space between the past and the present, human and yet not.” Occasionally, she bemoans her state. “Hope. You cling to it like a raft in a storm, never realizing it is the thing that is drowning you.” We follow her from the 15th to the 23rd century, as she meets Oliver at Shakespeare’s Globe Theater and she attends the 1969 moon launch, the Woodstock festival, and more historic moments. There are a couple of fairly steamy moments between the two, although they aren’t together often in their hundreds of years.
It’s thoroughly enjoyable.
“The Midnight Train” by Matt Haig is another good read. In fact, I liked it more than Haig’s popular “The Midnight Library.” (This is not a sequel.)
As Wilbur, age 81, is dying, he suddenly finds himself at a train station. When a train comes to a stop, a woman he knew from his childhood welcomes him aboard. “I am a ghost,” she tells him. “I am here to be your guide through your life. The one you just lived. ... This is death, where your life flashes before your eyes. ... That’s the whole point of this train. It’s to help you understand your life.”
The train passes by moments in his life, first back to his childhood, then forward chronologically to special moments, especially those he shared with his wife, Maggie. He can interact with the shadows he revisits, but he can’t change anything, though he’d like to. “There were days in life that rolled by and were never really thought of again. And then there were days that were so beloved or important that they contained inside them everything that came after. Russian doll days that were always inside the expanding future.” He thinks, “The incredibly annoying thing about being dead was that you got all your priorities in order, just when it was too late to do anything about them.”
One really interesting notion left me thinking: At the museum, Maggie says, “Just standing in front of big old paintings ... It’s the closest thing to time travel ... you stand in front of a Leonardo from, I don’t know, 1498, and it’s powerful because the painting is as it was then. The emotions and feelings of it are fresh. It hasn’t gone off. It is 1498 right there in front of you.” Hmm.
“The Last Labyrinth” by Gwendolyn Womack is historical fiction with a geological and mythical premise. In the near future, as Earth goes through a polar shift, a female musician named Magellan suddenly vanishes during a recital and finds herself in the center of a maze in 1829 on an English estate owned by an earl. It is “A labyrinth in time created millennia ago for one singular purpose. To protect a song. A song that can break worlds or make them whole again. An ancient song of such unspeakable power it was split into parts and hidden in time.”
From a curious pocket-size diary, supposedly written by Merlin’s twin sister, Gwynedd, Magellan learns that she is on a mission to find composers of the past and put together the song that will save the planet. Through the labyrinth’s magic, she travels to other times and places to find the composers she needs. “For music is the Force. Music is the very fabric of the universe. Music can alter fields of energy, lift objects in the air like leaves in the wind, and transform atoms at their core.”
I had to scratch my head over the musical premise, but it was fun to watch characters have adventures, escape danger, go on a quest, and experience time leaps. The writing is lovely: “One lifetime is but a star in the sky of the soul, and the soul is as vast as an endless sea.” A sequel is set to come out next year.
The more contemporary “Time Travel for Beginners” by Jaclyn Moriarty is set in present-day Sydney, Australia. The Time Travel Agency, set behind a simple storefront, offers customers a chance to go back in time and interact with anybody they wish. They can go back to moments in their own life, or visit a famous celebrity, or watch a world-changing event in ancient times.
Customers can travel in partial mode (as invisible observers) or complete mode (fully present and able to interact with anyone they encounter). Anna, who gets a job at the agency, is told, “Every time you travel, you create a new timeline. Changes only take effect in that timeline, not ours.” (This multi-universe creation is like the movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once” but without the hot dog fingers.)
The time travel element feels a bit like an arcade game, and customer Teddy is surprised by his time jump. “The place was not what he’d imagined, Teddy realized. It was not hypnosis. It was some kind of preprogrammed virtual reality experience.” Even the employees aren’t sure how the time travel works, and the manager, who invented the process, won’t say. I enjoyed all the time “trips,” and I liked the agency’s customer reviews. I liked all the characters, but I did not enjoy the journal entries in which one character writes about life with her teenage daughter. This part feels awkward and confusing, and for most of the book we don’t know why it’s here. Also, at 532 pages, the book’s a bit too long.
On the other hand, try the tiny, 121-page “The Last Window to the Old World” by Lena Alison. This is book one of a new science fiction series set on another planet in the year 4073. On Altren Colony, Ellie and her friend Liam work in the university’s time travel research division. To function, the time machine — “the temporal distortion field generator” — requires a living person’s memory. “They still don’t know why it works for some people and not others,” but it works for Ellie and Liam. With the help of an elderly woman, they will embark on a seemingly impossible trip into the past. YA-suitable, the story also has a bit about terraforming and interplanetary travel.
In “Twice” by Mitch Albom, Alfie at age 8 finds he is able to go back to his own past and change events. But what he changes can’t be undone a second time. And once he undoes a love, she will never love him again. Then he has to relive everything to get back to where he was (similar to Stephen King’s book, “11/22/63,” in which the protagonist travels back in time to try to stop the assassination of JFK). This is about second chances, and it involves a love story.
And check out a few of my old favorites: Jack Finney’s clever “Time and Again,” Octavia Butler’s brutal “Kindred,” Richard Matheson’s romantic “Somewhere in Time,” and Diana Gabaldon’s adventurous “Outlander.” There: I’ve recommended at least 15 books and their sequels. I think I’ve broken my old record! That should keep you busy for a while!
Happy reading!