Book Recommendation: How To Stop Time

Less than two weeks ago, I posted a blog about a book I read called The Midnight Library. I really enjoyed it. You can read that blog here:

Another Good Read – The Midnight Library

That was the first book I read by author Matt Haig, and it made me want to find other books by him that I might find just as good. So I went to the library website and found one. I’ve always been a big fan of time travel stuff, so the name of one book stuck out – “How to Stop Time.” While this isn’t a true time travel story in the sense of going back in time or forward in time, I found the premise interesting and ordered it.

Amazon and Good Reads both have this synopsis:

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 F. Scott 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.

One review I read said, “How To Stop Time plays like a meditation on the tick and tock of time and mortality. On the preciousness of every moment and the nightmare of having both too few and too many.” I thought this really hit the nail on the head.

Is it a love story? To a degree, yes, but it is more than that. It was another Haig book that I couldn’t put down and finished in two days. There were some slow parts, but all in all, it was a good read. There is talk that Benedict Cumberbatch is going to make a film based on this book.

People always are talking about living forever, but is that really something you’d want to do? Following Tom’s story and the highs and lows of being alive for so long will make you really think about how you want to answer that question.