Fiction by Beth Harbison.
I don't think I have mentioned before that book titles often remind me of songs, and when they do, I have the song in question stuck in my head for almost the entire time I'm reading the book.
Perhaps you can guess the song this title brings to mind? Yes, I've spent the past couple of days setting my face into a jutting Cher-jaw and singing, "Uh-if Ah could TURN back Tii-Um!"
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| image from wikipedia.com |
In this story, 38-year-old Ramie gets a chance to go back to being 18-year-old Ramie, to see if she would change any of her life choices. Or so it appears.
This is an idea that interests me greatly; I think one of my favorite movies is Back to the Future, because I love the part where George McFly changes everything with that one punch to Biff's face. It's a cool concept. I like time travel stories a lot... BUT...
There is one problem: the story does have to make sense within its own set of rules. For example, I can buy that Christopher Lloyd's character built a time machine out of a Delorian within the confines of that story, since he's a wacky inventor with access to plutonium, and he is set up that way from the beginning. I can buy that the guy in The Time Traveler's Wife (by Audrey Niffenegger) randomly and uncontrollably time travels within the confines of that story, because he lives in a world where there are such people, and again he's doing it from the beginning.
But this story seems to take place in the real world, with regular people having a party for Ramie's 38th birthday, and then she suddenly wakes up the next day on her 18th birthday. Well, I could just barely buy that one at first, but when she time-jumps again for no reason later in the story, my willing suspension of disbelief began to erode a bit.
Still, I will say that the author DID come up with an explanation at the end, although I didn't necessarily like the explanation.
All of this to say, this book was okay but not great.
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