Reviews with content warning for Violence - How To Stop Time

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

How To Stop Time by Matt Haig

13 reviews

jodar's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The story is well-written, its prose straightforward without being a simplistic ’airport read’ and the frequent time-jumps flow coherently. It is a didactic novel, but with a kindly, rather troubled teacher who endeavours to share his wisdom about the human condition from the vantage point of his unnaturally long life. By the end I realised that the reader’s role is equivalent to that of one of the pupils in the 21st-century, London school in which the MC as a history teacher relives his life “now”.

Some of the key things the MC seeks to teach us:

Life isn’t perfect, but if could be worse – one of my favourite passages:

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. (Part 5, “Dubai, now”)

We can’t control everything, but we aren’t entirely at the mercy of fate either. And what you choose to do matters:

‘You can’t choose where you are born, you can’t decide who won’t leave you, you can’t choose much. A life has unchangeable tides the same as history does. But there is still room inside it for choice. For decisions.… Just one wrong turn can get you very lost. What you do in the present stays with you . It comes back. You don’t get away with anything.’ (MC to pupil, Part 3, ”London, now”)

People are often annoying and can cause you mental anguish while you live with them and intense grief at death. But avoiding close relationships, although seductive for a time, is not the answer in the end, as without other people life is lonely and joyless. Various passages throughout the novel, for example:

‘Love is where you find the meaning. Those seven years I was with her contained more than anything else.… You simply can’t fall in love and not think there is something bigger ruling us. Something, you know, not quite us. Something that lives inside us, caged in us, ready to help us or fuck us over. We are mysteries to ourselves.…’ (Omai to the MC, Part 5.“Byron Bay, Australia, now”)

What will be will be, and it is fruitless and self-destructive to fear the future:

I understand that the way you stop time is by stopping being ruled by it. I am no longer drowning in my past, or fearful of my future. How can I be?
The future is you.
(MC’s final thoughts at the very close of the novel, having finally, after over four centuries,
Spoiler
succeeded in reconciling with his daughter and also begun a new intimate relationship
)

All well and very good, but to me there’s a strange, gaping hole in the narrative and MC’s exploration of meaning: religion. Religion is noted as the reason for his Huguenot family’s forced late 16th-century departure from France to England. The MC and his first love attend church in early 17th century England, until his unchanging appearance makes it untenable to continue. And the MC continues to live through periods of religious ferment. So it’s not as though the MC wasn’t exposed to contemporary Christianity, at least. And yet the MC doesn’t seem to consider, grapple with or argue against any religious understanding of life’s broader meaning. At all. At any time. Nor as far as I can recall do any of the other characters in the book. It’s almost as if every character in the novel, purportedly through centuries of time and across wide geographical areas of the earth, were all 21st century, English secularists all along. I find this weird and unbelievable!

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emma97louise's review against another edition

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hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

An incredible book that is reflective on the passing of time. Bounce between different centries exploring the life of character tom hazard.

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mpbookreviews's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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veebeebee's review against another edition

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challenging informative inspiring mysterious medium-paced

3.0

A unique idea and execution, but there were some plotholes that were hard to ignore.

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leonormsousa's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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booksemmahasread's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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theespressoedition's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

I'm a huge Matt Haig fan. If he writes it, I will read it (and most likely love it). I've been itching to get my hands on this book for ages now, but once I did, I found myself feeling slightly disappointed.

Now, maybe it was just the high of The Midnight Library and The Comfort Book, specifically, but I was really itching for something profound and inspiring to me, personally. That's not so much what I found in this book.

For the most part, this was historical fiction, with elements of magical realism thrown in there and a few nods to the modern era. I don't resonate well with historical fiction, so I think that's the first thing that kind of put me off. The concept of a person who ages at a snail's pace fascinated me, but I wasn't expecting to spend so much time getting to know Shakespeare... and that's kind of what happened.

Not that there's anything wrong with this in the slightest, it just didn't stand out to me. The meaningful aspects of the book were towards the last couple of chapters. Those, I could've highlighted in full, because they were so profound. However, I had hoped for a lot more of that throughout the book, so it was just a bit of a bummer.

However, I would read this book again! That might sound strange, but it's true. I do feel like there was a lot to learn from it, but I probably missed certain things because I got distracted while listening to the audiobook (which had a lovely narrator whose accent I adored, even if I wasn't obsessed with his performance). I'd like to read the updated edition that came out in 2022 as a physical copy to see what else I could gain!

As a whole, it was an interesting book, just not one that I would find myself recommending endlessly as I have with Matt's other books.

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