How to Stop Time; Matt Haig – Book Review.

How To Stop Time; Matt Haig

Synopsis;

“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. From Elizabethan England to Jazz-Age Paris, from New York to the South Seas, Tom has seen a lot, and now craves an ordinary life. It’s a life he once had, long-since buried but buried secrets have a habit of catching up with you and nobody can outrun their own past.

Always changing his identity to stay alive, Tom has the perfect cover – working as a history teacher at a London comprehensive. Here he can teach the kids about wars and witch hunts as if he’d never witnessed them first-hand. He can try to tame the past that is fast catching up with him. The only thing Tom must not do is fall in love.”

Thoughts; 

This is the second of Matt Haig’s books I have read, the first being “Reasons to stay alive“. I can honestly tell you that it was one of the most compelling books I have read in a while and I found it impossible to put down at times. I managed to finish it within a week of picking it up, and it would have been sooner was I not on vacation. If you ask me that’s fairly good going considering it’s over 300 pages long. 

After reading “Reasons” I was desperate to get my hands on another of Matt’s books but since I am trying to reduce the clutter in my home I tend to only borrow books from my local library rather than purchase them. Once I have a decent bookcase where I can display my literature with pride then I will, 100%, be purchasing both books for lending out if nothing else.

Unlike “Reasons” this is a work of fiction and centers around the character of Tom Hazard.

Tom, as the synopsis tells us, has a dangerous secret. He’s centuries-old but yet only looks to be in his early to mid-forties. He’s seen the beginning of many a new era including Elizabethan England, the roaring ’20s and now the 21st century.

Due to Tom’s condition, he’s had to completely uproot his life on several occasions just to fly under the radar. Now he’s a history teacher in a school in London, which is a perfect fit because he’s living history! The only problem is Tom has found himself falling madly in love with the French teacher at the school and love is a big no-no when you age at the fraction of the speed as regular human life. You can imagine why this is, can’t you? If Tom falls in love he risks exposing the whole underground society of the ‘Albas’ as well as himself. Not only this but his love will grow old and he will, eventually, have to watch her die. The avoidance of pain would be nice but I think a life without love would be worse than never having felt it at all. 

Themes within the book; 

It’s primarily a heartbreaking story about love and loss, but Haig has also used the novel as a way to explore humanity and how we view life. Tom has been through so many lifetimes and yet, here he is in the 21st century and nothing much has changed in terms of how we currently live.

In the novel, Tom speaks about how turtles have been on this earth for two hundred and twenty million years and they haven’t had to do much changing in order to survive. They just trod along at their own slow pace. Humans, on the other hand, have been here for a relatively short time in comparison and yet here we are driving ourselves and the planet we live on to extinction. We’ve set up camp on this planet and, in typical human fashion, have declared it ours. It’s my planet and I can destroy it if I want to, right?

“Turtles have been around for two hundred and twenty million years. Since the Triassic period. And they haven’t really changed that much. Humans, in contrast, have been around only a short while. And you don’t have to be a genius to switch on the news and conclude: we probably don’t have long.”

Haig also touches on our own very human fear of the future. Having many hundreds of years spread out in front of you is reason enough for Tom to fear the future but not in the same way we do. We, as human beings, often feel like we have to move faster because we don’t have enough time, we constantly live in the future instead of the present moment. Tom isn’t much different. His head is constantly looking to the ‘ifs’ and ‘maybe’s’ in front of him, and for a man with such a long life expectancy, it can be quite overwhelming.

Haig uses the novel to encourage us to throw away our own fears and to live in the present. Towards the closing of the novel Tom eventually learns that he needs to let go and to stop worrying about it in order to live a better and more fulfilling life. No one wants to spend 30 years worrying about the future let allow 100’s.

“You look at the news and it looks terrifying. But you can never be sure. That is the whole thing with the future. You don’t know. At some point, you have to accept that you don’t know. You have to stop flicking ahead and just concentrate on the page you are on.”

How is the story told?

The story is told through a series of time hops backward and forwards through the ages. It’s a nice look into Tom’s life before 21st century London and how he came to be.

Memorable Quotes;

“Whenever I see someone reading a book, especially if it is someone I don’t expect, I feel civilisation has become a little safer.”

“I
Like
The Way
That when you
Tilt
Poems
On their side
They
Look like
Miniature
Cities
From
A long way
Away.
Skyscrapers
Made out
Of
Words.”

“A problem with living in the twenty-first century….. we are made to feel poor on thirty thousand pounds a year. To feel poorly traveled if we have only been to ten other countries. To feel old if we have a wrinkle. To feel ugly if we aren’t photoshopped and filtered.”

“People you love never die. That is what Omai had said, all those years ago. And he was right. They don’t die. Not completely. They live in your mind, the way they always lived inside you. You keep their light alive. If you remember them well enough, they can still guide you, like the shine of long-extinguished stars could guide ships in unfamiliar waters.”

“And yet we had done what so often happened in the proud history of geographic discovery. We had found paradise. And then we had set it on fire.”

Rating; 

4 out of 5 stars from me.

There were just parts of the novel I found unrealistic in regards to all the famous people Tom had met throughout time. I just feel this would have been unlikely to happen. Maybe one person, or two, but certainly not the amount he seemed to be rubbing shoulders with.

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