How To Stop Time
Author(s): Matt Haig
A novel about love, loss and living in the moment, from the bestselling author of The Humans
The first rule is that you don’t fall in love. There are other rules too, but that is the main one. No falling in love. No staying in love. No daydreaming of love. Because otherwise, of course, you slowly lose your mind . . .
Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary forty-one-year-old, but he was born in 1581. Owing to a rare condition, he’s been alive for centuries. From Shakespeare’s England to Jazz Age Paris to voyaging the Pacific alongside Captain Cook, Tom has seen a lot, and he now craves an ordinary life.
Always changing his identity to stay alive, Tom now has the perfect cover—working as a history teacher at a London school. 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 quickly catching up with him. The only thing Tom can’t do is fall in love.
How to Stop Time is a wild, bittersweet, time-travelling story about losing and finding yourself, about the certainty of change, about the mistakes humans are doomed to repeat.
And about the lifetimes it can take to learn how to live.
Review(s):
“[Matt] Haig remains a keen-eyed observer of contemporary life.”
“Compelling and full of life’s big questions, How to Stop Time is a book you will not be able to put down.”
“Matt Haig’s latest book, How to Stop Time, is marvelous in every sense of the word. Clever, funny, poignant, and written with Haig’s trademark blend of crystalline prose and deft storytelling, this is a book that stirs the heart and mind in equal measure. A hugely enjoyable read.”
“Matt Haig has an empathy for the human condition, the light and the dark of it, and he uses the full palette to build his excellent stories.”
“A quirky romcom dusted with philosophical observations….A delightfully witty…poignant novel.”
“A wry, intriguing meditation on time and an eternal human challenge: how to relinquish the past and live fully in the present.”
“Haig has been gifted with a rare ability, which is to make the far-fetched – and even ridiculous – seem believable. His books tickle your mind and tug on your heart, and their pages slip by with beguiling ease.”
“A time traveling love story… [and] a coming-of-age tale that continues for centuries. It’s The Time Traveler’s Wife meets The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, yet manages to be even more unique.”
“Inventive, exciting, moving and bursting with insight about history, time and what it is to be human.”
“A rollicking time-hopping fantasy . . . How to Stop Time will provoke wonder and delight.”
ISBN: 9781443451390