Sean Randall reviewed How to Stop Time by Matt Haig
Review of 'How to Stop Time' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
This book was… different. I enjoy time bending fiction because usually it’s a thriller, or adventure, or scientifically interesting. But here, even though it is scientifically interesting and there is – or at least has been – much adventure, there’s also an overwhelmingly satisfying feeling of Humanity, of rightness, of oneness about Estienne. His observations are profound, proving that Haig has lost nothing of his genius. You can perhaps see some of this novel as a travel memoir through time, although it is of course really a story of how love survives and clings and fights on. I have read some chick-lit, some geeky romantic fiction and some overblown, almost pornographic novels. I have never read anything like this. It’s going into the same box as Watson’s Eleven and Extence’s Alex Woods, Crossan’s Apple and Rain and Joyce’s Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. It has a solemn, potent reality all its …
This book was… different. I enjoy time bending fiction because usually it’s a thriller, or adventure, or scientifically interesting. But here, even though it is scientifically interesting and there is – or at least has been – much adventure, there’s also an overwhelmingly satisfying feeling of Humanity, of rightness, of oneness about Estienne. His observations are profound, proving that Haig has lost nothing of his genius. You can perhaps see some of this novel as a travel memoir through time, although it is of course really a story of how love survives and clings and fights on. I have read some chick-lit, some geeky romantic fiction and some overblown, almost pornographic novels. I have never read anything like this. It’s going into the same box as Watson’s Eleven and Extence’s Alex Woods, Crossan’s Apple and Rain and Joyce’s Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. It has a solemn, potent reality all its own. Very much a book to come back to, to breathe in once again, to draw inspiration from and parallels with and to admire in all seasons, places, times and in almost every conceivable circumstance.
