Do you know what time does McDonalds stop serving breakfast? What can you get there in the evening?

by Matt Haig

This started out with a really pleasant tone, though there was a lot of 'telling'. Sometimes that can fit the story, putting background into context. It is not about time travel, as I presumed, but about a man who has a 'condition' that makes him very long lived, the opposite of the premature aging diseases we've all heard of.

Part of the story is about his quest to find his daughter who shares the condition, but he has much to learn from others of his kind. The story unfolds slowly in the first few chapters and blossoms into questions of the meaning of life and the importance of pleasures and especially of the power of music to move the soul.

I found myself captivated by the journey through time, seeing historic periods through Tom's eyes. He was a likeable character, though rather sad and world weary. The descriptions of what it was like to live through various times were believable and I enjoyed reading it very much.

A shock twist near the end didn't have quite the impact on me that I think was intended. I felt it was a little rushed and there was insufficient explanation of motivation. Apart from that, the story gave me a lot of enjoyment and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone with any interest in history at all.

This book was recommended to my by my bestie who probably knows better than most what my taste in literature is and she wasn't wrong with this one. However, I'm a fickle mood reader and when I picked up this book I just wasn't particularly interested in reading about the lives of these characters. The story follows a man named Tom who has a rare ability: he ages at an incredibly slow rate. The reader follows him from his birth up to the present where he is struggling with his centuries old existence and having to keep his secret (while trying to locate his estranged daughter). There's a secret society of those like him that are ruled over by a man who will do everything in his seemingly unlimited powers to keep their secret from being leaked. The issue I had wasn't that I didn't enjoy the narrative or its delivery but that once I put it down I didn't actively seek to pick it back up. (It was also on hold at the library so I didn't have long to languish over it.) I took that as a sign that this was one I'd have to revisit some time in the future. (haha time reference) Progress: I made it to page 127 out of 325.

“The longer you live, the harder it becomes. To grab them. Each little moment as it arrives. To be living in something other than the past or the future. To be actually here.
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?” 

You know when sometimes it feels like a book chooses you rather than the other way around?  Apparently, the two books I picked up while dazed with exhaustion at Heathrow last month did exactly that. I knew little about either of them and both turned out to provide exactly the kind of world-critical comfort I needed.

And, yes, I tend to not turn to sweet or light reads for comfort. Never have, really.

Anyway, How to Stop Time tells the story of Tom who was born in 1581 and "suffers" from a rare condition that makes him age very, very slowly. So, he lives through the centuries, falls in love, looses his loved ones, sees the world change, and sees the world remain the same.

"I go on the BBC and Guardian websites. I read a couple of news articles about fracturing US and Chinese relations. Everyone in the comments section is predicting the apocalypse. This is the chief comfort of being four hundred and thirty-nine years old. You understand quite completely that the main lesson of history is: humans don't learn from history."

Tom really suffers with this condition. He finds it hard to invest his life in people that he knows will die so long before him. He also finds it hard to live in one place, because his condition means that he is looked up with suspicion by the people around him, at best. At worst, he and his loved ones are persecuted.

“Human beings, as a rule, simply don't accept things that don't fit their worldview.”

He lives through the plague and the witch hunts and several other catastrophes. He discovers new worlds with Captain Cook and sees them go to seed.

“And yet we had done what so often happened in the proud history of geographic discovery. We had found paradise. And then we had set it on fire.” 

I really enjoyed the book. The story struck a balance between bildungsroman as we watch Tom grow and learn about who he is and about his place in the world, mystery as we follow Tom's quest to find his daughter, thriller as watch Tom get caught up in a dubious organisation, and social criticism. I really felt for Tom as he, despite his wisdom of age, struggled to deal with each moment of new-ness in this world.

“As far as I can see, this is a problem with living in the twenty-first century. Many of us have every material thing we need, so the job of marketing is now to tie the economy to our emotions, to make us feel like we need more by making us want things we never needed before. We are made to feel poor on thirty thousand pounds a year. To feel poorly travelled if we have been to only ten other countries. To feel too old if we have a wrinkle. To feel ugly if we aren’t photoshopped and filtered. No one I knew in the 1600s wanted to find their inner billionaire. They just wanted to live to see adolescence and avoid body lice.” 

What struck me most about the book, tho, was that Haig inserted snippets of positivity into the story. Despite the general observation that humanity is doomed to forever repeat itself because it does not take lessons from the past, there is also some hope:

“Whenever I see someone reading a book, especially if it is someone I don't expect, I feel civilisation has become a little safer.” 

The library didn’t have the book I wanted, so I picked up How To Stop Time instead. I started reading a Matt Haig novel before, The Humans, but for some reason it didn’t work for me. I can’t remember what it was as it was so long ago, but I’m glad I gave the author another try.

The story's about a man named Tom who has a condition which means he doesn’t age like the rest of us. His ageing process is very slow, taking hundreds of years and as such he’s been alive for a very long time.

The novel works in alternate chapters, some set in the past, like the time period when he knew Shakespeare and met his first and only love, Rose. Other chapters are set in the present, where he’s living a new life as a history teacher in London. As you would have probably gathered Tom is an excellent history teacher as he’s actually witnessed the events he teaches his students about, although he can’t tell them that.

There’s another story which weaves it’s way through the narrative and that is Tom searching for his long lost daughter who also has his condition and ages at a slower rate. Mixed up with this is a society which deals with his kind and organises for them to take on a new identity every eight years when suspicions begin to mount concerning their lack of ageing.

The story was good fun, being a fantasy-laced contemporary. Mostly it was plot-driven which is where it fell a little flat for me. I’m the kind-of reader who loves a good dose of character with my plot and I felt this was a bit lacking. While we got to know extensively about Tom’s life, he remained a bit of an enigma for me and as such wasn’t fully formed. There was also a good bit more telling than showing for my taste, as well.

How To Stop Time was a love story at its core, with a solid understanding of the human condition. While I did enjoy it, all the elements weren’t there for me. Saying that, I can definitely see myself reading more from this author as his stories have a fun-factor which I really enjoyed.