Rating: 5/5
Review:
Exceptionally good
I loved How To Stop Time.
I hadn't read Matt Haig before so I wasn't sure what to expect, but I
was completely engrossed; I found it entertaining, gripping, funny and touching
and it has left me with lasting impressions and a lot to think about.
The premise sounds rather well-worn and dodgy; Tom Hazard
was born in the late 16th century but has a condition which means he
ages very slowly, so that by the present day his body is in its early 40s. The first thing to say is that this is emphatically
*not* yet another book about what it might mean to be undead; it is a book
about what it means to be alive. It's a
cracking story, beautifully told. We get
stories of Tom's life from the time of Shakespeare, of 1920s Paris and so on,
interwoven with the present day when he has become a history teacher in a
London comprehensive school, close to where he had a dearly-loved wife and
daughter 400 years ago. Haig manages
this brilliantly and also introduces a tense plot involving a society of people
like him which may go to extremes to protect its members.
Tom has an ordinary life in many ways, but experiences far
more of it than normal. We see the
struggle to decide on a life's course, the pain of loss as those he loves die
and the persecution of the "different," for example, and there are well-nuanced
questions about what it means to live well; should we choose hedonism and self-preservation,
or humanity, love and engagement with others, along with the pain it brings? There is real richness here, and I marked
lots of passages which I liked – far too many to quote here. The whole thing is thoughtful and very
touching in places but with a lovely sprinkling of wit and wry comments which
made me smile (and actually laugh in some places) without ever interfering with
the story or the serious points being made.
I love the way he writes about love, the way he writes about history,
the way he writes about music…and so on, and so on.
It is unusual for me to gush quite so much about a book, but
I did think this was exceptionally good. I can recommend it very warmly indeed.
(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)
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