RETRO

A failed actress finds her calling as a Time Travel Agent guiding rich “explorers” on escapist vacations into the past.

Trapped in a bleak climate-ravaged present and dreading the future, unemployed Ashley Eckels’ doomscrolling brings her to Retro: the luxury time-travel startup founded by trailblazer Roland Temple. Ash and her fellow Time Travel Agents chaperone influencer girlies on Wild West bachelorettes and babysit disruptor bros partying at Woodstock. It’s the only job besides acting to engage Ash’s strengths, from photographic memory to her ability to completely immerse herself in a role, while also feeding her self-sabotaging woes about having been born in the wrong time. Despite its nascent existence, the charmingly heyday-obsessed Retro has anticipated every necessary department: Wares outfits Agents and explorers in period-appropriate garb that won’t blow their covers, while Preservation intervenes to fix any travel-related hiccups. The book’s vignette structure fools the reader, like Ash, into losing track of how long she’s actually been part of this incestuous microcosm of blurred boundaries and bad work-life balance, including her love triangle with enigmatic Miles from Preservation and 1930s gumshoe Frank. Retro insists its employees live on the premises and spend their spare time—weekends, birthdays—riding the Retro Metro. When you can go anywhere in time, you never want to be stuck in the present…until the present becomes the past you can’t return to. This is a 2020s office novel that cleverly lampoons both the luxury travel industry and self-obsessed tech bros’ myopic innovations. While Roland’s next paradigm-shifting phase is rather clearly telegraphed, the big reveal is still suitably audacious. The ambiguous ending goes a bit off the rails, with Ash racing toward her fate in an even more intrepid direction, but such optimistic abandon is gloriously freeing.

A nuanced, biting cautionary tale about how not staying present can erase our very selves.