A feel-good, entertaining blend of humor, philosophy, and romance, with a time-slip twist.
A time-traveling man tries to get back to the future and his beloved wife in this novel.
Time is a bit elastic for Danny Maytree, 75, an actor-turned-novelist living in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. As he tells Samantha, his wife of 38 years, “once in a while my mind and the conventional notion of time drift a little out of synch.” It’s 2021, and Danny’s current work in progress concerns an actor who returns to the past to reverse bad career decisions. After several strange, perhaps mescaline-induced experiences (including a conversation with his mysterious rescue mutt, Tali), Danny finds himself young again, in Beverly Hills in 1974. Life imitates art as Danny tries to get his bearings; he writes a screenplay based on his novel while also making career decisions informed by a lifetime of learning. But success is not his chief motivation. Stuck in the past, he hasn’t met Sam yet and is bereft without her. He believes that somehow getting his movie produced will restore him to his wife and his life. Through the course of his time-travel journey, several odd personal encounters and many mystical revelations open Danny’s eyes about the past, forgiveness, and grace. Lenz, whose memoir North of Hollywood (2012) recounted his life as an actor, grounds his novel in showbiz practicalities, such as getting funding. Cinema’s alteration of reality through techniques like montages and jump-cuts makes an effective metaphor for Danny’s experience, and clever, snappy dialogue beefs up the more abstruse mystical elements. Intriguing complications include the question “Have you ever considered the possibility that you sort of cling to Sam? Isn’t that a no-no in your spiritual view of the world?” A life-affirming ending wraps everything up.
A feel-good, entertaining blend of humor, philosophy, and romance, with a time-slip twist. (Time-travel novel, 16+)Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-9848442-6-5
Page Count: 383
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.
A time-toying spy romance that’s truly a thriller.
In the author’s note following the moving conclusion of her gripping, gleefully delicious debut novel, Bradley explains how she gathered historical facts about Lt. Graham Gore, a real-life Victorian naval officer and polar explorer, then “extrapolated a great deal” about him to come up with one of her main characters, a curly-haired, chain-smoking, devastatingly charming dreamboat who has been transported through time. Having also found inspiration in the sole extant daguerreotype of Gore, showing him to have been “a very attractive man,” Bradley wrote the earliest draft of the book for a cluster of friends who were similarly passionate about polar explorers. Her finished novel—taut, artfully unspooled, and vividly written—retains the kind of insouciant joy and intimacy you might expect from a book with those origins. It’s also breathtakingly sexy. The time-toggling plot focuses on the plight of a British civil servant who takes a high-paying job on a secret mission, working as a “bridge” to help time-traveling “expats” resettle in 21st-century London—and who falls hard for her charge, the aforementioned Commander Gore. Drama, intrigue, and romance ensue. And while this quasi-futuristic tale of time and tenderness never seems to take itself too seriously, it also offers a meaningful, nuanced perspective on the challenges we face, the choices we make, and the way we live and love today.
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781668045145
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
As ambitious as a Greek tragedy and just as lyrical and unflinching.
A Soviet scientist responsible for the Chernobyl disaster invents a time machine so she can change not only that fatal accident, but also her own destiny.
Anna Berkova grew up applying her brilliant scientific and mathematical brain to questions of nuclear power. A star of the Soviet Union, she designed the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, taking care to work through numerous safety protocols. Of course, it’s not enough, and when the reactor melts down on April 26, 1986, her life is only saved by an accidental jump through time. She finds herself in 1992, on top of a mountain, holding a bleeding woman who claims to be the daughter she gave away as an infant and who tells Anna she must use her time-traveling power both to stop Chernobyl and save her own granddaughter. From this striking, emotional beginning—which gives rise to a thousand questions—the novel follows three generations of Anna’s family, itself jumping around in time to explore the lives of Anna, her daughter, Molly, and her granddaughter, Raisa. All three struggle to find their places in the world as talented, strong, independent women, and all three will play a pivotal role in Anna’s quest to change the future—or is it the past?—not only to protect those who perish in the nuclear disaster, but to empower, and ultimately save the lives of, her family. In Barenbaum’s skillful hands, a complex concept and structure work beautifully, as the novel is slowly constructed one painstakingly detailed chapter at a time. The book is an incredible achievement with a heartfelt human theme: It’s never too late to let go of psychological baggage and heal past wounds.
As ambitious as a Greek tragedy and just as lyrical and unflinching.Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5387-3486-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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