Will Byrnes's Reviews > How to Stop Time

It is strange how close the past is, even when you imagine it to be so far away. Strange how it can just jump out of a sentence and hit you. Strange how every object or word can house a ghost. The past is not one separate place. It is many, many places, and they are always ready to rise into the present. One minute it is the 1590s, the next it is the 1920s. And it is all related. It is all the accumulation of time. It builds up and builds up and can catch you violently off guard at any moment. The past resides inside the present, repeating, hiccupping, reminding you of all the stuff that no longer is. It bleeds out from road signs and plaques on park benches and songs and surnames and faces and the covers of books. Sometimes just the sight of a tree or a sunset can smack you with the power of every tree or sunset you have ever seen and there is no way to protect yourself.

This begins with a personal bit of meandering. Please feel free to skip the next few paragraphs. I have noted below where the actual review begins.

Summer, 2021, I was looking for a Porch Read. I had recently discovered the joys of sitting on the back porch in the wee hours, reading from my phone a book I had no intention of reviewing. I do most of my reading at my desk, entering notes as I proceed. My second reading spot is bed, before g0ing to sleep, armed with a laptop. My goal is to get in 10-40 pps a night there, also entering notes, researching the unfamiliar, and copying quotable passages into the Word file I keep for every book I read.

I have not used the Apple Books app much, having read maybe a handful of items that way over the years. But my wife has acquired a fair number of e-books and I can access them. So, a quick trip to the available family-share e-library provided a decent selection. Haig’s seemed like the sort of pleasant fantasy I was looking for. So off we went, knocking off maybe 100 phone pages a night, of a bit over 700. An entertainment, not one of my beloved literary fiction books. But still, I found myself highlighting a few passages here and there. And when I got back to my desk the day after I finished reading it, I thought, well, I’ll just make a note on GR that I had read it, but the urge to make a file for it was too strong. I mean, ok. I don’t have to write anything, really, just record keeping. I surely don’t have to post anything. As I had not taken notes while reading that would be a bit of a challenge anyway. But, it turns out that one can upload highlighted items. Couldn’t hurt, right? Just filling in the QUOTES section of my Word file. But a part of the e-book is an interview with Haig about the book, and, of course, that is like free crack to a base head. I wrote a line, or two, summary stuff, and the reviewer that I had chained in the basement for this book was screaming to be let loose. So I began writing something soon after I finished reading. It was not a complete thing, just a start, really, and remained in a digital drawer, spotty, and unfinished, for rather a while. Good thing too.

It happens sometimes that I get stuck in a book, whether for reasons having to do with the book itself, or due to external forces, demands on my time, acts of nature. I was reading two novels at the same time, the norm for me. I was quite enjoying both, but September, 2022 has been a time of increased requirements. Not to mention a bout of Covid. My downstairs reading time was decimated by the need to get up early to drive here and there for various reasons. Out of the house I was unable to do much daytime reading. And by the time I went to bed I was only able to remain awake for an embarrassingly small number of pages. The result was that my well-crafted reading schedule was shredded, and I needed to dig into the archives for a read book that I had somehow managed not to review, if I were to keep alive my string of consecutive weeks posting a review, a thing of absolutely no significance to anyone but myself. (33 months at present) It is not quite a form of cheating. I did read the book. I did write a review. There is usually only a small gap between when I read the book and when I finish writing about it. So, not my usual review of an upcoming or recent release this week. Hope to be back in the saddle next week (Lungfish). The loss of a week does mean that books in my very full reviewing schedule will be pushed back a week from the dates on which I had hoped to post my reviews of them, which is never a happy thing.

ACTUAL REVIEW BEGINS HERE

Tom Hazard has been around a while, a very, very long while. Born in the late 16th century, he caught a winning ticket in the Methuselah Lottery, a condition called anageria, which causes him to age at a glacial rate. (one year for every fifteen of ours, kicking in at about age 11) Locals of any era might get just a wee bit suspicious of someone taking so long to reach the usual life stages. And we can expect the more superstitious, ignorant, and mean-spirited among them to assign dark forces to anything they do not understand. The more scientifically inclined might see a prized lab rat. Thus, the need for some protection.

I often think of what Hendrich said to me, over a century ago, in his New York apartment. “The first rule [unlike the first rule of Fight Club,] is that you don’t fall in love,’ he said. “There are other rules, too, but that is the main one, no falling in love. No staying in love, no daydreaming of love. If you stick to this you will just about be ok.

The Albatross Society was how Tom, Hendrich, and others like them stayed alive in the fast-aging world. They called themselves “albas” while referring to those stuck with more usual lifespans as “mayflies.”


Matt Haig - image from The Guardian by Sarah Lee

But there is more than just the love thing. In return for services and protection from the Society, every member must agree to uproot every eight years, new location, new name, new backstory, and they must do some task assigned by Hendrich. Which has a familiar sound to it.

Well, you can see straight off how at least a part of this is gonna go. Don’t fall in love? Oopsy. Too late. Tom struggles with this near-immortality situation, as most literary long-lifers tend to do. Think vampires. And is life really worth living if there is no love in it? So, we have Tom’s journey through time, and his struggle. He has a purpose, providing motivation for his actions, but I will not spoil that for you.

The other element here is Matt Haig touristing through several time periods of interest.

I used the novel as my own personal time machine, traveling to places I would be interested in visiting. I debated whether to include famous characters in the novel. Especially Shakespeare. That seemed a huge risk, for obvious reasons. But I knew that if I actually traveled back to Elizabethan England the thing I would want to do most is meet Shakespeare. And after all, a lot of real human beings did actually meet Shakespeare, and he was quite an accessible figure at the time, especially as London was a far smaller place than it is today. I wanted to give a true sense of the weight of time and the idea that the past was never really lived as ‘the past.’ It was always just another present. - from a Conversation with Matt Haig in the Appendix

The Shakespearean play performance is particularly rowdy and fun. He rides with Captain Cook, who commits outrages against indigenous people in Australia, plays piano with F. Scott Fitzgerald, visits a lawless 1926 Arizona, Hollywood of that era, London and New York of the late 19th century, Australia, Tahiti and more, touching on each of the centuries in which Tom has lived. While he does look at political subjects, (such as rabble-rousing around witchcraft and bigotry, whether via superstition or a desire for economic or political gain, and Cook’s crimes) they are not a primary focus of the book.

Just as Tom does for his pupils, Matt Haig brings History to life. Matt told us that he chose teaching as an occupation for Tom because he “thought it’d be fun to have a history teacher who himself IS history”. Matt’s mum was a teacher for forty-five years and he wanted “to take this character who has lived for centuries, who has realised there is no more important or wonderful life than that of a teacher.” - from the W.H. Smith interview

How to Stop Time is a bit of an exaggeration, as it would have been more accurate to have titled the novel How to Slow Down Time. It is not a time travel novel, per se, as the character lives in a linear chronology. His steps among several places and time periods are via memory, not magical transport. In a less long-lived mode, the “Observer-through-time” format has a character looking back over personally experienced history. This has been used quite nicely over the years, usually maxxing out at about one hundred years. Jack Crabb of Little Big Man pops to mind, as does Forrest Gump. The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart, by M. Glenn Taylor, is another. Tom Hazard has a longer history to recall.

For quite a while I had wanted to tell the story of someone unfathomably old. I felt like it would be an interesting way to look at history by making it personal. I also think the best way at looking at human life is often to have a narrator who is a little bit beyond human. It’s like taking a step back from a painting to get a better view of it. I thought, for instance, it would help explore some very human things, such as how to cope with grief. If you live for centuries you are going to know about loss. - from a Conversation with Matt Haig in the Appendix

Tom, by nature of his peculiar genetics, is doomed to feel like, and be an outsider. This lines up with Haig’s prior work, both fictional and non, about depression, including his own. He has a knowing voice on the subject. How to Stop Time was Haig’s sixth adult novel. He had written five non-fictiOn books, including the wildly successful Reasons to Stay Alive.

So, bottom line is that How to Stop Time is a warm, engaging read, offering a lead relatable by being stricken with issues common to us all, regardless of our longevity, finding and holding on to love, keeping his secrets, and trying to live an honorable life. The visits to diverse times and places, and to some familiar historical figures, are delightful, and help keep the book chugging along. Makes you wonder who would be on your short list of historical figures you’d like to meet, which places you would want to see and when you would like to see them. You can get an early start by taking on Matt Haig’s particular list. It is a quick read, so you will not have to stop time to get through it.

…what is the point of living when you have no one to live for?

Review posted – October 7, 2022

Publication date – June 11, 2019 – Viking – First published in 2017




This review has been, or soon will be cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi!

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, FB, and Twitter pages

Interviews
-----Festivalettertura - Stopping Time with. Matt Haig

Rather than coming from a place of superior knowledge, he writes instead as an explorer, seeking especially to come to terms with depression and other mental health issues. How to Stop Time is a metaphor for the secret burden of mental health, and the profound, alienating, loneliness that it can bring. In this sense, it is a continuation of Haig’s previous novel, How to Stay Alive.

-----R. H. Herron - Ep. 209: Matt Haig on Literally Writing the Multiverse

Reviews of other work by the author
-----The Midnight Library

Items of Interest
-----Penguin Random House - How to Stop Time Reader’s Guide
----- Book Club Questions for How to Stop Time by Matt Haig by Heather Caliendo
-----Monty Python - The Albatross sketch