“A quirky romcom dusted with philosophical observations….A delightfully witty…poignant novel.” —The Washington Post “She smiled a soft, troubled smile and I felt the whole world slipping away, and I wanted to slip with it, to go wherever she was going… I had existed whole years without her, but that was all it had been. An existence. A book with no words.” Tom Hazard has just moved back to … words.”
Tom Hazard has just moved back to London, his old home, to settle down and become a high school history teacher. And on his first day at school, he meets a captivating French teacher at his school who seems fascinated by him. But Tom has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he’s been alive for centuries. Tom has lived history–performing with Shakespeare, exploring the high seas with Captain Cook, and sharing cocktails with Fitzgerald. Now, he just wants an ordinary life.
Unfortunately for Tom, the Albatross Society, the secretive group which protects people like Tom, has one rule: Never fall in love. As painful memories of his past and the erratic behavior of the Society’s watchful leader threaten to derail his new life and romance, the one thing he can’t have just happens to be the one thing that might save him. Tom will have to decide once and for all whether to remain stuck in the past, or finally begin living in the present.
How to Stop Time tells a love story across the ages—and for the ages—about a man lost in time, the woman who could save him, and the lifetimes it can take to learn how to live. It is a bighearted, wildly original novel about losing and finding yourself, the inevitability of change, and how with enough time to learn, we just might find happiness.
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
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This was unlike any book I have ever read. It was great! I highly recommend it.
Quirky, original and unique – all the things we’ve come to expect from Matt Haig. This tale of love that spans time, and time that spins out of control, is both romantic and haunting, not to mention a little tragic. Haig is always easy to read, and I enjoyed being sucked into this novel world. A quick read that is like having literary fiction for brunch.
Overall, well-written, with characters in which a reader can invest. The challenges and struggles of the protagonist are clear and often wrenching; the human antagonist is easy to dislike once he is clear, and the physiological antagonist is heartbreaking in what it costs the main character. There’s some predictability and some less-than-full
development of a few lesser characters, but the character sketches drawn of Rose and Grace are good though they are sketches; Haig writes these as line-drawing-artists present a whole with a few lines. The historical snatches are rather delightful, and I did find myself not willing to put the book down when my limited periods of reading that I can spare were done.
Tom Hazard has an unusual condition. He ages very, very slowly. He looks fortyish but is actually over 400 years old. He has even met Shakespeare and Captain Cook! He belongs to a society that protects people like him from research companies that want to use him as a “lab rat”. The society insists he change his identity every eight years, so that no one notices his condition. They also have one rule: Never fall in love. Sadly, he did, centuries ago, and he still suffers from the loss. Now, he is a professor in London, and he fears he will fall in love, again, with the French teacher, Camille. But he wants to live!
This is a wonderful book! Matt Haig’s characters are so very real and his settings so very vivid, that his subject matter comes alive, too! We follow Tom through his present, while interspersed chapters that explain his past pop up every now and then. These chapters explain why Tom is and reacts the way he does. This story is more than just entertaining. It also presents a valuable lesson for all of us.
This is an excellent book! It was like The Time Traveler’s Wife and Forrest Gump and The Last American Vampire, and every time travel-y thing I’ve ever loved.
The author took an unbelievable premise — that there are people among us who live 800-900 years — and populated it with it totally believable people and circumstances. I couldn’t put it down.
A great premise for the story. I found the central character to be a bit boring and predictable.
One of the most perfect books I’ve ever read. I loved the main character, Tom Hazard, from the first word, and that love carried me throughout the book. I loved the concept, of how Tom has managed to live to be 491. I loved how he kept plugging along through life, even when life was almost unbearable. I love that after living almost half a millennia, even he has a hard time understanding the purpose of life. Kind of takes the pressure of us normal humans. The message was lovely–that we should live in the present, not dwell on the past or worry about the future. And that immortality is nothing to wish for, because the human mind isn’t built for it. The idea that we are meant to live a short time on this earth is surprisingly a comforting notion, because it means we should be satisfied with what we’ve been giving and not pine for something else. This life is enough.
Absolutely the best, most well written, thought provoking time travel stories I have ever read. Bravo!
Beautifully written story about the power of time.
We always contemplate that there is not enough time to do all we want, but what if there is too much time? There are plenty of books/stories out there about immortality as a curse (watch everyone you love die). Some are very well-written, others are too predictable. But this struck the right balance. If you are a fan of Claire North (“The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August” and “Touch”), you will like this story.
A bit of a spoiler…powerful men don’t do their own dirty work. The ending of Haig’s book was spoiled for me for this reason… But the rest was lovely. Enjoy!
If you really want to be depressed, reading this book is a great way to start. I am 21% into it, and the author, who has some talent with words, manages to avoid a plot and simply swing back and forth between the protagonist’s miserable memories and the dreariness of his current life. I hope this book gets better. But I feel my own life is limited, and with so many good books available, why should I waste any of the time I have left sloughing through this one?
Original idea, but became too repetitive as I progressed towards the end.
OK read, I did finish it even though I’ve read other books with a similar thesis that were better.
I’m not sure Matt Haig could write something that I wouldn’t love. He is so different and imaginative and I love every word he writes.
I thought the story was well thought through and very well executed. I liked the way the chapters moved from the past back to the present, this is done well, making the story easy to follow. Matt Haig makes some very interesting observations on superstition and ignorance, and what you might call ‘the human condition’ both past and present. I thought relationships were very well described in terms of the emotional impact living for centuries has on them, and the main character Tom. The moments of happiness, but also the pain of so many losses and sad memories. Also the impact of fear from years of living with his secret.
How do you choose quotations or review a book as insightful and rich as How to Stop Time? I fear I could never do it justice. The characters, the imagery, the life lessons and the history all come together into something emotionally stunning, and I simply do not have the words to describe its impact on me.
In my opinion: WORST COVER CHOICE EVER. Don’t let the cartoonish cover fool you! There is nothing childish or goofy about this novel. I wish I hadn’t waited so long to pick it up, certain it must be another mediocre time travel trope. Judging this book by its cover was a huge mistake, because Matt Haig has given us a truly beautiful centuries-spanning story in How to Stop Time. I’d love to solve The Mystery of the Tragic Cover Choice.
All that said, this book may move too slowly for most of you. However, if you loved Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, I believe you will find another favorite in the literary wonder that is How to Stop Time.
I started it in December of last year and forced myself to stop in January because of a deadline I’d placed on myself to complete the manuscript on my very first novel. Therefore, I didn’t touch this novel for a good month before returning to it. Unheard of for me and yet somehow appropriate, given the central conceit of the novel.
Tom Hazard is over four hundred years old, though he doesn’t look a day over forty. He suffers from a genetic condition called anageria, which results in significantly slowed aging in its subjects, about one year of aging for every fifteen normal years. More than any other consequence, this condition causes him to be an outsider in time. As normal people age and die like mayflies, Tom is increasingly isolated by his quasi-immortality. This condition is further reinforced by the Albatross Society, a shady group whose goal is to find other albas, or albatrosses, like Tom and protect them from a supposed government conspiracy to perform genetic experiments. However, to remain safely within the Society, members must follow the cardinal rule – never fall in love.
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The mood of the novel is that of nostalgia tempered with humor – Tom suffers for his condition and loses much over the centuries because of it. Tom’s story alternates between the past and the present. This structure allows Tom’s backstory to emerge gradually, creating and satisfying the reader’s curiosity. Not all stories manage this shuttling back and forth in time very well but it is essential to this story.
Tom’s isolation is also important to the story, as it places him in the position to make broader observations about the nature of human beings. He comments on the circuitous nature of history, and the way human beings repeat their mistakes over and over, unable to rise above the constraints of their age. To Tom, life is nothing more than a series of moments slipping away, impossible to hold onto because the next moment rushes in, and the next and the next afterwards in unrelenting succession. He’s desperately adrift, having lost touch even with himself, living in quiet despair and profound loneliness. The only reason he doesn’t end his life is because he is searching for his daughter, Marion, who has also inherited his condition.
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Haig’s writing is engrossing, describing a man who has lived too long, seen too much and is disconnected from all of it. Tom is fond of music – he plays over thirty instruments by the time we encounter him in the narrative. The author chooses this talent wisely – music is an impermanent pleasure, demanding full immersion from the listener. Like time, music belongs to the moment, slipping away into the past as soon as it is experienced. There is no way to hold it.
The narrative is also full of references to literature and culture, and the reader is treated to meetings with historical figures such as William Shakespeare and F. Scott Fitzgerald which are not as lingering – or interesting – as the reader would hope. At one point in the narrative, Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy is referred to as a “m*therfucker” and, as one who took on the task of reading it, I couldn’t help but chuckle in agreement.
However, the reader learns there is a way to stop time, as the title proposes. You can’t escape the hungry maw of time, as it crawls ever forward. But there is the power of memory to recapture lost moments, and the inevitable vulnerability of surrendering to love, which can make time seem irrelevant. The lesson is the same whether one is a mayfly or an albatross.
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It’s easy to get lost in this novel, which is the number one requirement for a good read. The writing is controlled and precise. The plot was credible, though the writer does expect a certain suspension of disbelief towards the end, as if he’d out-plotted himself and needed some way to undo the knot. No matter; it doesn’t detract from the overall pleasure of the book.
Note to writers:
Excellent example of threading back story through the narrative
Shifts in time clearly marked with chapter changes
First person narration that is not claustrophobic because focus is on both the internal life of character and the descriptions of the external environment (balance between navel gazing and physical setting)
Writing can be aphoristic but just skirts the realm of the “fortune cookie.”
I should rate these, shouldn’t I? I think it’s a solid 4.5 out of 5 stars.
This is an unusual, but very good, book. The protagonist is 41 years-old and he has lived for centuries. The chapters jump around, from London 1599, to Arizona 1926, to present day London and many other places. We travel with the protagonist has he lives through those times.
We learn about all the advantages and disadvantages of living so long in this very entertaining and thoughtful book.
Tom Hazard looks like an ordinary man in his 40s, but he has a secret, a secret that compels him to stay on the move before friends and neighbors get suspicious. Tom doesn’t age. He’s been alive for centuries and has to adhere to the strict rules of the Albatross Society, a mysterious group that protects people like Tom. Their most important rule: Never fall in love. You never age, but your loved ones will grow old and die. But that’s exactly what Tom has done.
How to Stop Time is a beautiful love story about the passage of time and how we can learn to live with change, memory, and death.
I read nonfiction for knowledge and fiction for wisdom. There is much wisdom in this entertaining tale.