How to Stop Time

Matt Haig is easily one of my favorite authors, especially after reading this book.

Matt Haig is easily one of my favorite authors, especially after reading this book.

This is so strikingly beautiful.

3,5 sterretjesGelezen voor de NEWTs readathon van Book Roast:Acceptable in Herbology: een audioboek.“The way you stop time is by stopping being ruled by it.”Net zoals [b:The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August 35066358 The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August Claire North https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1493966668l/35066358.SY75.jpg 25807847] gebeurt in dit boek eigenlijk relatief weinig. Het hoofdpersonage leefde en leeft een vrij saai leven, behalve dan dat hij niet 40 maar meer dan 300 jaar oud is en op één of andere manier veel grote bekenden van die paar afgelopen paar eeuwen ontmoette (van Shakespeare over Kapitein James Cook tot Josephine Baker). Hij verzuipt in melancholie, over hoe in elke tijdsgeest de mensen in essentie hetzelfde blijven. Hij rouwt na 100'den jaren nog steeds om zijn vrouw en kan daardoor niet meer verliefd worden. En hij beklaagt zijn rol in de geheime genootschap van mensen zoals hij, maar ziet in hen de enige hoop om zijn dochter te vinden en doet daarom dingen waar hij op het moment zelf of achteraf spijt van heeft.“I don't know for sure that the words I write were the words that were actually spoken. They probably weren't. But this is how I remember these things, and all we can ever be is faithful to our memories of reality, rather than the reality itself, which is something closely related but never precisely the same thing.”Eigenlijk opnieuw een boek dat ondanks zijn interessante premisse over tijdloze wezens toch een vrij monotoon en weinig spannend verhaal verteld. En toch, toch werkte dit boek voor mij wel, terwijl ik dat ander boek echt pokkesaai vond. Komt het omdat ik het als audioboek las en zo mee kabbelde met de vertelstem? Goed mogelijk. Hoe dan ook de melancholie, de mooie gevatte bedenkingen en de schijnbaar random flashbacks naar het verleden weefden voor mij een mooi meeslepend relaas, gedrenkt in zowel weemoed als hoop. “You have to keep walking forwards. But you don't always need to look ahead. Sometimes you can just look around and be happy right where you are.”Het zette aan tot nadenken en verwoorde heel mooi de essentie van het bestaan in relatie met tijd. Het kwam met momenten heel filosofisch over, maar raakte bij mij wel snaren en sloeg nagels met koppen. “The key to happiness wasn't being yourself, because what did that even mean? Everyone had many selves. No. The key to happiness is finding the lie that suits you best.”En ook al mankeren er op het einde van het boek toch wel wat antwoorden op een deel van mijn vragen, ik bleef niet achter met een onbevredigd gevoel, maar met een glimlach en het gevoel dat ik nieuwe inzichten verwierf.

4.5 stars. I really enjoyed this (and tbh I was expecting to be disappointed), I found it thoughtful and philosophical. Not so much about the story, but more of a collection of ideas. I will be reading more from Matt Haig.

Interesting premise and thoughts on time and age. Took itself a bit too seriously though.

Tom Hazard looks 41-years-old but he has a rare condition. He ages at a slower rate and is actually four-hundred-and-thirty-nine-years old. Tom is protected by a secret society for people like him and with their help, he must move around every 8 years to not create suspension. The number one rule to this secret club, don't fall in love which hasn't been a problem for Tom. This time around he decides he will move back to his old stomping grounds, London, to become a high school history teacher but when he meets a woman at work he starts to remember the fulfillment and hurt that comes with any life. Now, Tom's current life is haunted by his past experiences and he must decide if he will stay stuck in his former memories or finally begin living in the present.

How to Stop Time alternates between present-day London and Tom's many past memories but I was never confused. Haig does a good job of keeping the story moving but not disorganized. The synopsis of the book will have you think this is a love story between two people but I think it is about following Tom during a time when he feels his life is spent and is questioning his place not only in the world but in the secret society. There is a love story but it's not the novel's main focus like the movie, “The Age of Adeline” or the book, The Time Traveler's Wife. The romance is slow burning and a reader may be confused when they start reading and find nothing happens with this present day romance until the last half of the book. It takes Tom a long time to accept his feelings. I think the main theme of the book was more about the heaviness of being alive. How a group of people you thought was protecting and helping you may have been hurting you? Also, seeing the good, “to love food and music and champagne and rare sunny afternoons in October. You can love the sight of waterfalls and the smell of old books.”

I really enjoyed this book. I found myself marking many passages that stuck with me. The read can be a little slow at times (what life is always exciting?) but it was quite thrilling by the end.

Some favorite quotes:

“That's the thing with time, isn't it? It's not all the same. Some days - some years - some decades - are empty. There is nothing to them. It's just flat water. And then you come across a year, or even a day, or an afternoon. And it is everything. It is the whole thing.”

“And, just as it only takes a moment to die, it only takes a moment to live. You just close your eyes and let every futile fear slip away. And then, in this new state, free from fear, you ask yourself: who am I? If I could live without doubt what would I do? If I could be kind without the fear of being fucked over? If I could love without fear of being hurt? If I could taste the sweetness of today without thinking of how I will miss that taste tomorrow? If I could not fear the passing of time and the people it will steal? Yes. What would I do? Who would I care for? What battle would I fight? Which paths would I step down? What joys would I allow myself? What internal mysteries would I solve? How, in short, would I live?”

I quite enjoyed the first half of How to Stop Time. It jumps back and forth across history to tell this man Tom's life story, which is fascinating because he's been alive for like four hundred years, and he's not exactly a happy person, but he's got a lot happening and he's interesting.

Then the second half lost me: it doesn't matter if you happened to live through 400 years of history, the likelihood of you meeting basically every famous person that ever lived ... well it's absurd and it dragged me out of the narrative and had me all but rolling my eyes at this guy. He even has a somewhat meta moment when the girl he likes in the present-day, Camille, calls him a name-dropper. Like, maybe I would have believed ONE of those experiences, but to ask me to accept that this one totally average guy played the lute in Shakespeare's theater band while the Bard was composing As You Like It, AND sailed with Captain Cook, AND drank Bloody Marys with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, AND was once winked at by Charlie Chaplin in a restaurant, AND ...

Tangent: Back when Mitt Romney was running for president in 2012, there was a running Saturday Night Live gag, in which fake-Mitt (Jason Sudeikis) would be talking during the debates and town hall meetings, and would make a point, and then someone would shout from off-screen, “WE DON'T BELIEVE YOU!” (Followed by Jason-Mitt saying “Okay, all right, okay!” and moving onto the next thing.) Matt and I still joke about this gag all the time.

I wanted to shout “WE DON'T BELIEVE YOU!” at Tom throughout the second half of the book. It basically halted the flow of the novel and made the second half drag. And the rest of the story - his search for his daughter, breaking free from the shackles of “safety,” his regular-life existence - was all really good! So I wish someone other than Camille had told the real-life author to JUST STOP IT.

As a person who lives history and time travel books, I really enjoyed this story of a man, and a few people like him, who age only 1 year for our 10, and thus is able to live for 950 years, experiencing so much of history but with the problems that come with being different, as well.

Great concept, clunky execution.

Another great tale from Mr. Haig. It explores the human condition in only the way that he could - placing value on living in the moment and being a good human to others. I greatly enjoyed this!

Meh. The premise was good, but I wasn't a fan of the pacing and short, stabby sentence style.

Basically terrible. A decent idea ruined by a plot that relies far too heavily on coincidence, a nonsensical villain, and a cod profundity that looks shallow next to a mass produced Ikea kitchen poster. Gets a bonus star for repeatedly namechecking a pub I drank in a lot twenty years ago but still a massive disappointment

This is a spoiler-free review
Read on In The Sheets

I first discovered Matt's books several years ago when I happened upon The Humans at my local book store. It sounded fun and  there was a dog on the cover, so I was really left with no choice but to buy it. By the time I'd closed the book it'd easily become my new all-time favourite and I was determined to hunt down and read everything he'd ever written. I mean like, within reason. Nothing weird.

How to Stop Time tells the story of Tom Hazard (great name) who's not necessarily immortal, but ages at a fraction of the speed of a normal human, but it's also so much more than that.

Like The Humans, How to Stop Time is much deeper than you'd anticipate going into it unless you're already familiar with Matt Haig's work. At it's core, it's a beautiful story about life, relationships, love, and what truly makes us who we are.

Aging at a fraction of the normal rate and living for hundreds of years sounds delightful, but less so when you're forced to choose between 400 years of loneliness and watching the people you love and care about grow old and die over and over again.

As per usual, it's beautifully written, I could not put it down. When I finally did, it left me feeling satisfied and pining for more. It's been a couple of months since I read this and it's still a book I think about all the time. 

How to Stop Time (like all of Matt's other work) is a book I cannot recommend enough. Also, the cover is gorgeous and it's already being turned into a movie staring Benedict Cumberbatch, so there's that.