Book Review: How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

Rating: ★★★★☆

Genre: Literature & Fiction, Science Fiction

Publisher: Viking

Publication Date: February 6, 2018

Living for centuries sounds great until, like Tom Hazard, you’re over 400 years old, realize you have no reason for being alive, and the past is starting to blend with the present.

Forever, Emily Dickinson said, is composed of nows. But how do you inhabit the now you are in? How do you stop the ghosts of all the other nows from getting in? How, in short, do you live?

Tom Hazard seems like a fairly normal 40-something-year-old history teacher living in modern-day England … except he’s not, of course. In fact, Tom was born in France centuries ago, and at well over 400, he’s just doing what he’s good at: surviving. But surviving isn’t the same as living.

Tom is one of a number of people who have a secret condition that makes them age one year for every fifteen “mayfly” years. They call themselves albatross, referring to normal humans, with their short lifespans, as mayflies. They even have a secret society and everything, and every eight years, they move to a new city and start a new life. Which is how Tom Hazard winds up in London for a second time, by the same name he was last there as. The problem is, the older he gets, the harder it becomes to distinguish between the past and the present, especially in a city that had meant so much to him centuries before.

As his headaches get worse and his grip of reality starts slipping, Tom finds himself in a dangerous position. All he wants, all he’s ever wanted, is to find his daughter. It’s what led him to join the Albatross Society in the first place. But the Albatross Society has rules, and Tom’s about to break the biggest one: never fall in love.

☙ This book is so. Darn. Quotable. AND I LOVE IT. I mean, everyone loves a good quote or two, right? But How to Stop Time is written in such a lovely way that the prose was going along like normal and then suddenly, this amazing quote flies out and smacks me in the face, the sort I was to plaster to my wall. Granted, I’m a nerd that way, but still. I actually really liked this fact. I felt like there was always some little nugget that wasn’t beaten over the reader’s head, but which was still effectively delivered and instilled some bit of hard-earned knowledge from the character, and I enjoyed that.

☙ This book isn’t really time travel, and I’m glad because I’m not big on time travel. Which makes me wonder why I picked up the book except that it sounded good? If you’re going into this expecting time hopping of any sort other than the narrative kind, this may not be your thing. The narration does jump between the present and the past, but the sequence of events is linear. There is no jumping back or forth in it as far as the main character is concerned except in memories, which seems like a big deal considering it’s sold as a time travel book, but I liked this, so I’m still counting it as a positive.

☙ There’s so much philosophy and contemplation and exploring what it actually means to live for 400 years, and I loved every bit of it. Of course, I say that knowing that not everyone does. Indiana Jones, this is not. There isn’t really any heart-stopping action, but that’s not why I picked this up. It raises philosophical questions, ethical questions, personal questions, and it tackles a pretty hairy subject that a lot of people fear: mortality. Sure, it’s easy to say that it’d be nice to “live forever,” but what How to Stop Time is great at is showing the other side of that. What it would REALLY mean. You know, the whole be careful what you wish for sort of thing.

☙ The way the narrative was told, in flashes between the past and present, and flowing seamlessly between the two seemed confusing at first, but I quickly warmed up to it. If anything, it actually helped me relate better to the character. One of the biggest problems Tom is facing at this point is severe headaches, and along with that is an inability sometimes to distinguish between the past and the present, to the point where his memories sometimes become jumbled and confused. I thought the narration style really highlighted that, and while it was sometimes confusing for me to make that jump, it did give me a lot of insight and sympathy for what the character himself was ultimately going through.

☙ This is definitely no action book; it’s a slow burn with what I felt was a rewarding ending, but you have to be able to hang on for it. It actually took longer than I thought it would to get to some sort of conflict or definite plot point that made me want to keep reading. Tom Hazard is an okay protagonist, but not strong enough, in my opinion, to character an action-less novel, and it definitely took time for me to get invested in the story.

☙ The casual name-dropping of famous people Tom met felt very stretched and unbelievable. In a book where people live for centuries, I know, maybe I’m just being nit-picky, but it seems like Tom just happens to be in all the right places at exactly the right time to meet some pretty big people in history, and all purely by coincidence. There are some that I buy, like the entire arc with Shakespeare. I loved it and thought it was well done. But the more it went on, the harder it was to believe.

Will I read this book again? Probably not. Will I post quotes from it on my wall? Heck yes. Because I’m a weirdo, I have this sort of conversation all the time with people, about what it would mean to live for a long time, and the most poignant part of this book is how it handled that subject. Yes, a lot of it is depressing, which is pretty much how I would picture being four hundred years old, but there’s also a lot of hope in it, too, which is impressive. How to Stop Time is a solid read, and one I’d recommend to anyone looking for a little food for thought, who can handle the slow burn progression.

What would you do if you knew you were going to live for hundreds of years, barring being brutally murdered? I would … well, probably not survive that last stipulation, honestly. How about you?