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beccaelizabethThis has been on my to read pile for months, because I havent been reading much.
Last night I picked it up around the time I was thinking of going to bed, just to read a chapter or two.
... I finished it by well past four in the morning.
... so.
This is a very good, very involving book. It drew me in and I kept wanting to know the next revelation. I'd say I wanted to know what happens next, but it is very much out of chronological order for everyone, not being a story that could flatten out, and it keeps on circling around the same moments, to explain them.
One thread that draws you through is a young woman who finds a dead woman in a locked room, and needs to know why. It says this on the back cover. But that thread is about the atemporality of trauma, how she keeps going back to re-experiencing the moment, how therapy tries to help her create a story that leads her out of it.
But all the other threads make things ever so more complicated.
It is a little about what time travel does to the minds of time travellers, but a lot about institutional pressures and how everything can be shaped by a single mind if that person has power. And saying so feels like a spoiler, even though it is also by the end of it obvious in hindsight.
And it is about family and how three generations react to the first of them, one of the first time travellers, having mental health problems. How everyone reacts, since she had her first breakdown on the BBC. The scale, how personal it is and how that spins out and out, is excellently explained.
Under that cut is spoilers of a sort, and I recommend reading it in the sequence it presents itself. I saw a sentence in the 'book club questions' in the back when I was flipping through to see how much was actual book, and then I was grumpy with myself because I'd have liked to find that out when the book wants to tell me.
... almost all the pages are narrative book, but in the back are a set of psych questionnaires for time travellers, which are in their way fascinating too. Also felt like a let down and a backing away from the very vivid story. And commentary on it? They were interesting. Dont read them first, but they highlight things.
So do the book club questions, but I did not much like them.
Almost everyone in this story is a woman, as most time travellers are here. Some are black or asian or mixed race, and that is part of what makes the story go. As is the reaction of people in power to those with the 'wrong' accent. It's very sharp about all that.
And some main characters are lesbian or bi, and it is a love story between women as well as a murder mystery.
Warnings cut:
From a certain point of view one f/f couple both die. From another point of view the story ends on their wedding day. One of the things the story loops around is time travel is WEIRD about death.
While I'm doing warnings, there are dead bodies. Vividly described. And disrespectfully handled.
I actually skimmed past that page but it was very nasty.
A lot of people die, several at an old age, but not simply or quietly or *of* an unelaborated old age. There's a focus on details that are not comforting.
But it is never just spectacle. It's all about minds and the impact.
... several mental health problems come up, some by name, like OCD and eating disorders. The main institution has no sympathy whatsoever. But the story does.
I started writing this before the cleaner was here and now it's hours later and I feel like I lost some threads.
But:
This was a very excellent book and I recommend it.
Last night I picked it up around the time I was thinking of going to bed, just to read a chapter or two.
... I finished it by well past four in the morning.
... so.
This is a very good, very involving book. It drew me in and I kept wanting to know the next revelation. I'd say I wanted to know what happens next, but it is very much out of chronological order for everyone, not being a story that could flatten out, and it keeps on circling around the same moments, to explain them.
One thread that draws you through is a young woman who finds a dead woman in a locked room, and needs to know why. It says this on the back cover. But that thread is about the atemporality of trauma, how she keeps going back to re-experiencing the moment, how therapy tries to help her create a story that leads her out of it.
But all the other threads make things ever so more complicated.
It is a little about what time travel does to the minds of time travellers, but a lot about institutional pressures and how everything can be shaped by a single mind if that person has power. And saying so feels like a spoiler, even though it is also by the end of it obvious in hindsight.
And it is about family and how three generations react to the first of them, one of the first time travellers, having mental health problems. How everyone reacts, since she had her first breakdown on the BBC. The scale, how personal it is and how that spins out and out, is excellently explained.
Under that cut is spoilers of a sort, and I recommend reading it in the sequence it presents itself. I saw a sentence in the 'book club questions' in the back when I was flipping through to see how much was actual book, and then I was grumpy with myself because I'd have liked to find that out when the book wants to tell me.
... almost all the pages are narrative book, but in the back are a set of psych questionnaires for time travellers, which are in their way fascinating too. Also felt like a let down and a backing away from the very vivid story. And commentary on it? They were interesting. Dont read them first, but they highlight things.
So do the book club questions, but I did not much like them.
Almost everyone in this story is a woman, as most time travellers are here. Some are black or asian or mixed race, and that is part of what makes the story go. As is the reaction of people in power to those with the 'wrong' accent. It's very sharp about all that.
And some main characters are lesbian or bi, and it is a love story between women as well as a murder mystery.
Warnings cut:
From a certain point of view one f/f couple both die. From another point of view the story ends on their wedding day. One of the things the story loops around is time travel is WEIRD about death.
While I'm doing warnings, there are dead bodies. Vividly described. And disrespectfully handled.
I actually skimmed past that page but it was very nasty.
A lot of people die, several at an old age, but not simply or quietly or *of* an unelaborated old age. There's a focus on details that are not comforting.
But it is never just spectacle. It's all about minds and the impact.
... several mental health problems come up, some by name, like OCD and eating disorders. The main institution has no sympathy whatsoever. But the story does.
I started writing this before the cleaner was here and now it's hours later and I feel like I lost some threads.
But:
This was a very excellent book and I recommend it.