katiecatbooks's review against another edition
2.0
Exasperating. Dragging. Unfulfilling.
Story: Our story begins with a letter from our narrator to the woman he loves. It seems our narrator exists out of time. He writes more letters and they all begin time-stamped with the exact same time. We finally learn our protagonist's name on page 7. And so the story begins, jumping around in time, to solve the riddle of the Lost Time Accidents.
Language: This is definitely a language led book, filled with similies and long descriptions. Unfortunately it's mostly fluff. While a couple of lines made me chuckle, most of them just left me demanding, get on with it already!!!
Characters: The main characters in this book are our narrator, his father, his aunts, his grandfather, and his grand uncle. If you are confused already, don't bother picking this book up.
So underwhelmed...
Story: Our story begins with a letter from our narrator to the woman he loves. It seems our narrator exists out of time. He writes more letters and they all begin time-stamped with the exact same time. We finally learn our protagonist's name on page 7. And so the story begins, jumping around in time, to solve the riddle of the Lost Time Accidents.
Language: This is definitely a language led book, filled with similies and long descriptions. Unfortunately it's mostly fluff. While a couple of lines made me chuckle, most of them just left me demanding, get on with it already!!!
Characters: The main characters in this book are our narrator, his father, his aunts, his grandfather, and his grand uncle. If you are confused already, don't bother picking this book up.
So underwhelmed...
jennybun's review
slow-paced
1.5
Forced myself to finish only because it was either listen to this or listen to my coworkers. Interesting concept, poorly executed.
oczerniecka's review against another edition
3.0
“Time is a misbehaving Thing because it moves and you can’t see it. If you can’t see it how do you know it’s moving? You don’t know. But it’s gone and now you’re in a different Place. It’s going and moving and taking Things with it. Always in the one Direction, never the others, but Nobody can find out where it’s going. My Grandfather found out. He called it the Accidents because nobody could guess the Direction.”
Wow, I really don’t know what to make out of this book. It is a multi-generation tale of a family that is, let say, obsessed with Time. Story spans hounded years of history, takes place in Czechoslovakia, Austria and United States and mentions historic events and science inventions, there is a bit about Holocaust, and there is something about Einstein and other scientist, relativity theory, there is event something about Gustav Klimt and his painting “The Kiss”. So there is a lot going on in the story.
Story is narrated by the youngest of the family, Waldemar “Waldy” Tolliver. We first meet him in the apartment in Harlem, NYC, where he is suspended in time and where he is working on writing down and understating history of his family. And the family is full of eccentric characters. It all starts with his great great-grandfather in Easter Europe in Znajmo. The first of Toula family to work on Time Accidents. Then there are his two sons that are determined to work on his father’s inheritance and found out what he discovered before his death, Waldemar and Kasper. Waldemar is very eccentric one, the one I cannot really understand. He is showing for a bits throughout the whole story, and he is known in history as a Black Timeskeepr of Czas, he was performing experiments in a Nazi death camp in a town called Czas (which in Polish means Time). Kasper is not obsessed with the Time as much, and overall seems to have a fairly normal life, that ends in Bufallo in the States. He has three children, girl twins and a boy who is our narrator’s father. The sisters are fascinated with Time and its nature and spend their life on working on it. The son, Orson become a sci-fi writer, mostly for pulp magazines writing porn filled time travel stories, and later novels. His first novel becomes foundation for a cult.
Ok, there is just way too much in the story to actually put it here. It has everything, but did nothing for me.
stephaniejnl's review against another edition
4.0
Another time travel book (oh how Lost inspired me to read new genres) but this is more an epic family tale that reveals itself in non chronological order. I found that if I had longer stretches of time to read I got into it more. With English not being my first language there were some words I didn't know (all that physics stuff is interesting but a bit hard) but because of the premiss of this book most get explained along the way.
A journey through space and time and a very interesting family history - 4 stars!
A journey through space and time and a very interesting family history - 4 stars!
librarimans's review against another edition
2.0
Equal parts fascinating and frustrating, this was a bit of a slog that at times felt like a lost time accident in and of itself. I'm pretty sure I liked it, but given time to reflect and think about it some more, that may change.
kate_303's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Antisemitism
annarocks's review
Couldn't get through it. The protagonist didn't interest me and his storytelling was too long and drawn out. Life is too short to stick with a book that isn't holding your interest.
bitterindigo's review against another edition
3.0
I don't know, man. I kept putting this on hold at the library, missing the pickup date and having to put it on hold again, and then I finally got it. I thought it was a time-travel story, and as a time-travel story it really doesn't work. As whatever it's actually trying to be? Well, I'm not entirely sure it works as that either. For the first quarter or so I was so consistently amused and engaged by the writing style and the frequent brilliant and hilarious turns of phrase that I didn't really care - I loved how Einstein is only ever referred to as "the patent clerk". Then things started to drag a little and by the end I was pretty much finishing it out of duty. There's some good stuff in here, but I didn't really feel like it hung together enough to be a great novel. Maybe I just didn't get it.
tdeshler's review against another edition
3.0
I had hoped the time travel aspects would have been better incorporated into the story. In the end, it felt like a mildly interesting history of a rather eccentric family and the supernatural bits felt out of place.
abetterjulie's review against another edition
1.0
280/490, so more than halfway and I don't want to read anymore. It's dull. There's so much potential, the writing itself is fine, but the story drags and the people annoy me. I love that cover, though.