Review: How to Stop Time

How to Stop Time by Matt Haig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Next year I turn 60 years old. (Gasp!)
I used to think that was so old, but now I'm not sure so sure.

I have several friends who were born the same year as I was and even more who were born a few years before and a few years after. We grew up listening to the same music. We know the words and sing along. We remember the same events in history. We had similar experiences.

I love having friends whose experiences are different, but there is something deeply satisfying about playing cards late into the evening, singing, reminiscing on old television shows or our memories of Disneyland. We share similar ailments too and if I complain about weight gain or menopause or the inability to see in dim light, my friends will understand.

And that's the thing. We are aging. No one lives forever, and at some point, a few of us will be left. Our memories will seem irrelevant or ancient history, depending on how long we stick around.

That is the case of Tom Hazard, who was born in the time of William Shakespeare, but whose body doesn't grow old at the same pace as other people, who watches his friends , neighbors, family, grow old and die while he continues to look like a teenager. The people around him don't share the same experiences.

And more dangerously, his unchanging face make him suspect. Is he a wizard? Is he bewitched? Can he be trusted? Can anyone around him be trusted?

And so he lives a life of movement. Here. There. Without interpersonal connections.

Matt Haig tells this story, moving from the present to the past, to another past, to the present, and to other pasts. He does this seamlessly, as the protagonist narrates his own story, reflecting on his experiences and how he feels about them.

I enjoyed this type of story telling. It had a point. Just as my past experiences inform and influence the way I experience the present, so Tom's centuries of experience inform and influence his present. His reflections take me to places in the past that I don't know, and as he shares them, I see them, feel them as well.

My only critique is that the book moves slowly. I suppose it has to, but at times I just wanted the book to move. Even as I make this critique, I think to myself that perhaps the slowness is essential to portray Tom's life. It HAS moved slowly. My life moves relatively quickly, but when the book starts, he has the body of a 40-year-old. He can expect to live for another two or three hundred years.

Overall, I enjoyed this book.

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