BOOKS

ENTANGLEMENT

by Bryan Walpert

Mākaro Press — $35

It needs to be made clear that this is a science fiction novel, specifically of the time travel variety. It takes place in three alternating narrative streams, one of which is told in reverse, so that the couple whose relationship is at the heart of it and whom we are — or were, or will be — following meet near the end. Another thread is told via exercises from a writing workshop. And there is a third, which is a ‘straightforward’ time travel story.

There is no denying that the novel is technically adventurous. But the time travel plot’s focus is still the time-honoured one of someone going back into the past to prevent something terrible happening in the future.

As well as the science fiction, there is an awful lot of science fact, mainly theories about time travel and its possibilities. There are accounts of thought experiments from Schrödinger and Einstein, of course, and Immanuel Kant arrives on page 26 — pretty much on time. As for “entanglement” itself, that is a concept in physics that is abstruse even by that science’s heady standards, and few readers will come to grips with