How to Stop Time: A Novel

This was a great read. Lots of great quotes and good writing overall. The writing makes you tap into your imagination while still keeping it very real. I did feel the plot was predictable. The entire book being one main character POV was sometimes perfect but sometimes lacking. However, the story is satisfying! And again, there are plenty of good quotes and a-lot of philosophically inclined thought provoking paragraphs.

This is currently my favorite book I have ever read. This book is historical fiction with a gentle touch of sci-fi, and just enough romance woven throughout it's pages, enough to make you feel something but not enough to make it feel like a true romance novel (which is a huge plus for me - I do not like strictly romance novels but I enjoy some romance along the way if it helps build the story). My favorite thing about this book is the witty, relatable, poetic writing style, with a fresh story from a quirky perspective. This book is witty, poetic, relatable and truly captivating. I could not put this book down. The character development was done very well, the story was very captivating, and the insights from the main character make you really stop and think about your own life and things you probably have never thought about.SPOILER FREE - The only reason I did not rate this book 5 stars is in regard to the end. The end was satisfying and I wouldn't say it was bad, but it certainly felt very rushed, forced, and a bit of a stretch even within the realm of the reality within the universe of the book. The ending was wrapped up within about 30 pages, so to me the book felt like it went from a really good pace to 500 miles an hour in the last 30 pages, and while it did wrap up pretty much everything you want it to wrap up, it does so in such a quick way that is feels like whiplash. This book still remains my favorite story I've ever read, despite there being other books I have rated 5 stars, but with the very rushed ending I just couldn't give it the perfect score as much as I so badly wanted to.Overall this book is AMAZING and my favorite read so far. I highly recommend it!!

Historical locations, events, and cultures plus three-dimensional characters with depth, feeling, and emotions. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and highly recommend it

At first, I was put off by the plot and the writing, which seemed to me to move, sometimes lurch, from turgid to brilliant. But the novel grew on me.The Washington Post noted that the book has ‘observational philosophy.’ Having finished, I’m not sure whether the term is meant as praise or insult. There are many observations, some interesting, some deep, some neither. My reading was crippled by the notion of the Albatross Society, which seemed like a weak pretext for control of Tom’s life. If he had been an ordinary guy, stumbling through the centuries, I could have believed he would fall for Hendrick’s very thin rationale, but he’s a thinker. I would have liked hints of skepticism … logic, more than the angst we did see … earlier in the book, some sense that a con game was being played. Tom’s credulity reduces tension, weakens the plot, and makes the reveal (Marion and Tom’s supposed letter) seem to be a device, rather than a natural extension of the story.Tom happens through the centuries meeting and conversing with an unusually large number of famous people through happenstance rather than planning. Shakespeare dispairs in his ale, Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda bicker over cocktails, Captain Cook, and so on. The book has elements of a fable, in which such encounters would work fine, but its overall modernity makes them seem calculated. We could have lost Fitzgerald and Zelda without affecting the story line, for instance.Reading the novel reminded me that a novelist’s decision about what to write defines both challenges and opportunities. If you need to pass through several centuries, first person-narration is almost mandatory if you’re not going to adopt omniscient narrator, which is out of fashion. Haig picks first person and occasionally struggles with its limitations. He frequently ascribes motivation to others where he could guess it, perhaps, but not know it. (“She nods, knowing it is a lie,” when in Tom’s point of view.) This and other technique issues took me out of the story from time to time.Also, there’s the issue of narration vs. dialog: If you live for 400 years, what voice do you speak in? For Tom as narrator, Haig sensibly chose modern English, but he needed dialog, which he wrote in what he guessed was language of the time. As Rose is dying, we get “"Her breath was a weak draught. (narration in 16th-C English) ‘You will.’ ‘Oh, Rose.’ I needed to keep saying her name and for her to keep hearing it. I needed her to keep being a living reality. (narration Mod E) We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone (maybe 16th C) . . . She asked me to sing to her. ‘Anything in your heart.’ ‘My heart is sad.’ ‘Sing sadly, then’ (credibly 16th C). I was going to grab my lute (‘grab’ = ModE) … " I read this passage as I travelled on Amtrak over a badly-maintained road bed. The jerkiness of the train seemed like the language here. Haig had little choice … dialog adds depth, and the dialog needed to be in 400 years ago English. Haig simplified it, but the 21st C narration grated. That said, the concluding line of the section was beautiful: "And she died and I lived and a hole opened up, dark and bottomless, and I fell down and kept falling for centuries."

Tom Hazard, a man who appears to be in his 40s, has rather inconveniently been alive for over 400 years due to a rare condition that slows his aging. While everyone he knows bustles about living and dying, Tom just…doesn’t. While the world spins on, Tom lives a life of history and solitude. He’s hobnobbed with some historical greats, sure, but immortality-ishness comes with its own set of problems — chief among them being found out, but also the agony of loving and losing and living with for centuries. This isn’t a novel about history so much as a look at time — how it moves, how we cling to it, and how hard and how necessary it is to live in the present.This book is like a slow, deliberate sip of whiskey — smooth, then burn. The timeline jumps the author makes put us in Tom’s shoes as he increasingly “slips” back and forth in memory. You feel his disorientation as time plays tricks on him, causing him memory headaches. This novel does not shy away from THE BIG STUFF: resilience, fear, regret, mortality, the urgency and blessing of a lifespan. And in the end, it’s the stubborn optimism of it all. It’s a gentle nudge toward living our best lives in this very moment.

I loved this book. Part time travel, part speculative fiction, part philosophy, part love stories- I think I just love Matt Haig’s attitude to life. I’ve been late to the Matt Haig party, but I won’t be leaving any time soon… Lots for book clubs to discuss, too…