“That’s the thing with time, isn’t it? It’s not all the same. Some days – some years – some decades – are empty. There is nothing to them. It’s just flat water. And then you come across a year, or even a day, or an afternoon. And it is everything. It is the whole thing.”
Tom Hazard is a young man starting his new job as a high school history teacher. However, no one knows about his life, his secret. Due to an extremely rare condition, he does not age as humans usually do and because of that he is alive for centuries.
Every couple of years he has to change his identity to not get exposed. The rule is to not get attached to one life and to never ever fall in love. But what happens if your heart does not care and is following its own way?
“Everything is going to be all right. Or, if not, everything is going to be, so let’s not worry.”
How To Stop Time is written by Matt Haig, a British novelist and journalist of both fiction and non-fiction. Following a major depressive disorder at the age of 24, he wrote the book Reasons To Stay Alive based on his own experience and how he recovered and learned to live with it.
For me, it seems like Haig may even be using some of his experience in this book as well as the book reflects on topics everyone stumbles across in their lives.
“To talk about memories is to live them a little.”
Tom takes the reader with him on his journey over the course of several centuries and in flashbacks, it’s revealed how he suffered as a child and how cruel life has been to him ever since. After he stopped ageing, people started to notice and he was found by the Albatross society. It turns out, he is not the only one with this condition and the society protects and helps people like him to get new identities, including where they will live and work.
He moves back to London and he’s haunted by his memories. He remembers his first life and love, and places he once knew are no longer there.
Tom winds up breaking up the one rule the Albatross society makes them live by: never fall in love. He falls in love with his colleague as he’s tired of hiding and does not want to be alone anymore. That is the reason why the society want to relocate him again and assign him to another new life. But Tom refuses and wants to break free from the society. The question is, what will it cost him?
At first the book seems to be just another immortal story with maybe even has vampires in it. Gladly it is not anything like that because, let’s be honest, we had enough of such stories.
The book is a love letter to life and how important it is to find your place in the world. How you should cherish every moment because you never know when everything can change, when you will lose the ones you love and when your own life could end. For me, the book felt like a little history book as well. London is well described through all the centuries Tom is alive.
Does Tom find his happy end? Well if you want to know you have to pick up the book and find out!
Before the book was published it was announced that Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock, Doctor Strange) will portray Tom Hazard in the movie adaption which has been acquired by Studiocanal and SunnyMarch. Unfortunately, the production has not yet started and therefore no release date is currently known.
You can find How To Stop Time at Book Depository, Amazon, and all other good book retailers.
Have you read the book? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!
Synospis | Goodreads
“The first rule is that you don’t fall in love, ‘ he said… ‘There are other rules too, but that is the main one. No falling in love. No staying in love. No daydreaming of love. If you stick to this you will just about be okay.'”
A love story across the ages – and for the ages – about a man lost in time, the woman who could save him, and the lifetimes it can take to learn how to live
Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he’s been alive for centuries. Tom has lived history–performing with Shakespeare, exploring the high seas with Captain Cook, and sharing cocktails with Fitzgerald. Now, he just wants an ordinary life.
So Tom moves back to London, his old home, to become a high school history teacher–the perfect job for someone who has witnessed the city’s history first hand. Better yet, a captivating French teacher at his school seems fascinated by him. But the Albatross Society, the secretive group which protects people like Tom, has one rule: never fall in love. As painful memories of his past and the erratic behavior of the Society’s watchful leader threaten to derail his new life and romance, the one thing he can’t have just happens to be the one thing that might save him. Tom will have to decide once and for all whether to remain stuck in the past, or finally begin living in the present.
How to Stop Time is a bighearted, wildly original novel about losing and finding yourself, the inevitability of change, and how with enough time to learn, we just might find happiness.
