Lark Benobi's Reviews > Time Shelter

Time Shelter is so remarkably clever that its cleverness became a distraction to me. I never felt there was a human connection to be found in the happenings on the pages--it was just a story. However witty the flourishes the effect as a whole was a little airless and self-referential. I wanted it to matter more. Just now my thoughts zinged in the direction of Saramago, an author whose books are also often dependent on incredibly clever intellectual absurdities like 'what if everyone went blind?' or 'what if everyone stopped dying?' or 'what if the Iberian Peninsula broke off the European continent?--and yet somehow these absurdities lead the author to such profound meditations on humanity. This novel amazed me just as much as those. But I wanted also to be moved.