How to Stop Time

240220 How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

Tom Hazard is a morose loner. Born in 1581, he fell in love in 1598. He lost his love and never loved again.

Not once in the next 400 years.

Tom has a rare genetic condition that opposes progeria. Rather than aging quickly, Tom – and a few others – age very slowly, about one year for every fifteen years. Since the condition kicks in at puberty, Tom spends eighty years as a teenager. In his youth, i.e., the sixteenth century, this raises fears of witchcraft. Tom learns discretion.

In the 1890s, he discovers an organization of similar individuals who take control of his life, insisting that he avoid entanglement with “mayflies,” i.e., those who live and die within the allotted eighty years. People like Tom call themselves “albatrosses” in homage to the alleged long lives of the bird.

This book skips back and forth between the present – London circa 2018 – and various episodes in his past. Tom and his beloved wife, Rose, had a child, Marian. Marian received the albatross gene, but when Rose died of the plague in 1619, Marian disappeared. He's been looking for her ever since.

Tom has lived through history and met some great people – Shakespear, Fitzgerald, Cooke, Samuel Johnson, and others – but he is not an interesting person. He comes across as morose and awkward. He seeks to live an average life. As the story opens, he takes on a job teaching history to school children. There is a romance. There is also tension as Tom comes to trust the Albatross Society less.

I liked the story. I tend to like stories with protagonists who are essentially immortal. The hopping around in time in the story was fun and kept the story moving along. The story ends with action after a slow burn build-up. I could pick some nits about how conveniently the threads of the story came together in the last ten pages, but I am not because I enjoyed the ride.

This book is being made into a television serialization starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Tom Hazard. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/miptv-2023-benedict-cumberbatch-series-matt-haig-how-to-stop-time-1235376489/#!