Time's Arrow
Ratings11
Average rating3.3
15
Ratings11
Average rating3.3
In Time's Arrow the doctor Tod T. Friendly dies and then feels markedly better, breaks up with his lovers as a prelude to seducing them, and mangles his patients before he sends them home. And all the while Tod's life races backward toward the one appalling moment in modern history when such reversals make sense. "The narrative moves with irresistible momentum.... [Amis is] a daring, exacting writer willing to defy the odds in pursuit of his art."--Newsday
Reviews with the most likes.
This is an odd one, for sure, but interesting. While reading it, because the “protagonist” is a consciousness that lives “backward in time” within a man, is disorienting. I also feel odd, after having read a bit of it, because my brain starts to turn time around as I read, and then when I stop reading, I have to reorient. It's almost like experiments with sight–give somebody special glasses with a mirror setup so that they see everything “upside down,” and pretty quickly the brain will compensate so that you see it “right side up”–take the glasses off, and (luckily!) the opposite happens.
This book is like those special glasses, except regarding time. Pretty cool.
Well written, but somehow ended up feeling trite. Do we need a gimmick to make us understand? I don't think so.
