Time and Again
1970 • 399 pages
Ratings44
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings44
Average rating3.5
[Comment by Audrey Niffenegger, on The Guardian's website][1]:
> Time and Again is an original; there is nothing quite like it. It is the story of Si Morley, a commercial artist who is drawing a piece of soap one ordinary day in 1970 when a mysterious man from the US Army shows up at his Manhattan office to recruit him for a secret government project. The project turns out to involve time travel; the idea is that artists and other imaginative people can be trained (by self-hypnosis) to imagine themselves so completely in the past that they actually go there. Si finds himself sitting in an apartment in the famous Dakota building pretending to be in the past . . . and ends up in the Manhattan of 1882.
> The story makes good use of paradox and the butterfly effect, but its greatest charms lie in Si's good-humoured observations of old New York and the love story that gradually develops between Si and the beautiful Julia, who doesn't believe Si when he tells her he's a time traveller. Time and Again is laden with authentic period photos and newspaper engravings which Jack Finney works into the narrative gracefully. When I first read WG Sebald's Austerlitz, a very different book in both subject and mood, I realised that it owed something to Finney's innovative use of pictures as evidence within a novel. Really, the pictures seem to say, this did happen, I saw it, don't you believe me? The pictures cause us, the readers, to sway slightly as we suspend our disbelief; they look like proof of something we know is unprovable. Isn't it?
> There is something wistful about time travel stories as they age: 1970 is now 41 years past. A lot happened in those years, and these characters are blissfully unaware of the future. I get a little shiver of nostalgia in the book's opening pages: gee, people used to go to offices and sit at drawing boards and get paid to draw soap. What a world. Perhaps if I could imagine it completely enough, I could visit . . . but no. I'll just read about it, again and again.
[1]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/14/science-fiction-authors-choice
Featured Series
2 primary booksTime is a 2-book series with 2 primary works first released in 1970 with contributions by Jack Finney.
Reviews with the most likes.
I just loved it.
It was one of those books that draw you in in a soft and cosy way, yet grab you with an ice cold fist round the heart at key moments.
I wouldn't say that it was brilliantly written or that the characters are particularly three dimensional, or that the plot is especially innovative - but I would say that it just somehow hit a sweet spot for me.
I think this is one where the imagery and feel will keep returning to me. One to reread sometime I think!
I really loved this book. It is a very different take on time travel. I am looking forward to the next book.
This book is more coherent than the movie. I've rated it somewhat low for a few reasons. The story had basically no ‘science' to make it qualify as science fiction. Long passages of the story are written in an overly descriptive, yawn-inducing style. However, if you have a strong interest in descriptions of New York City life during the last part of the 19th century, this book is for you.
There are various books by different authors with this title—such as [b:Time and Again 40224330 Time and Again Clifford D. Simak https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1527468765l/40224330.SY75.jpg 342347].This book gives us an affectionate and nostalgic look at New York in 1882; the author seems to have researched the period thoroughly, and conjures up the atmosphere quite well. The edition that I have includes a number of old photographs.The hero travels back in time in any unusual way (no time machine is involved) as part of an experiment sponsored by the American government; and to investigate a mystery. It's a crime story and a love story, a historical romance with elements of science fiction.Both the good and the bad aspects of life in 1882 are described; but the author clearly prefers the past.Not a literary masterpiece, but it's an unusual book that you may find worth reading. I've read it only once; but I give it three stars because I may yet read it again someday.
