The thing about time travel novels is, you’re either supposed to think deeply about whether or not the time travel actually works, or you aren’t. As actual “time travel”, the decade hopping done by the main characters in Jaclyn Moriarty‘s latest novel for adults, Time Travel for Beginners, may not stand up to scientific scrutiny, but as a technique for making readers think about consequences, powerlessness and regret, it works a treat.
Anna is stuck in life; she works a dead end job at the Nut Bar, where her boss is cold and judgemental. She thinks Anna coddles her teenaged daughter, Nicola, and is unforgiving about things like being late because Nicola overslept and needed a lift to the bus stop. So when Anna gets hit by a car, and in a concussed state, texts said boss to quit her job, it may not be the worst thing in the world to happen to her. A friend finds her a job at the Time Travel Agency – a quaint shopfront that most people in the neighbourhood think is some kind of novelty VR experience. The other staff are friendly, the boss is warm and understanding (and bakes!) and the work is interesting. It seems too good to be true.
Meanwhile, Teddy is also stuck. His wife has left him for his brother, and his two best friends coax him off the living room floor where he has been wallowing, and convince him he needs to change things up a bit by coming to house and dog sit for one of them in the neighbourhood that is also home to the Time Travel Agency.
In yet another strand of the narrative, a character named Jade has been gifted writing lessons, sending her once a week to work in a studio above… you guessed it, the Time Travel Agency.
At first, it seems as if Moriarty has set up three very separate stories to tell. Then, the strands of the narrative begin to dance closer and closer. While there has always been an element of the magical to Jaclyn Moriarty’s work, it is this bringing together of people and timelines that makes her writing truly fantastic. Just as the reader begins to think that something makes no sense, or that an element is contradicting itself or has not been explained (for example, Teddy’s friends’ bizarre nicknames), the answer is revealed and you understand that the writer has been carefully planning when to tell you what from the beginning.
Reminiscent of her young adult books, such as Finding Cassie Crazy, it is clear that Moriarty still has a keen sense for understanding interpersonal dynamics. She skilfully juggles the ins and outs of friendships between both her adult and her teenaged characters. None of her teens feel like overly sarcastic, eye-rolling caricatures, and the anxieties of the maternal figures are slowly built up so that the reader feels alongside them, even when they are being completely irrational.
Likewise, Teddy’s struggles to see his own marriage clearly, even after it has ended, is very well done. Even the portions of the story told through messages in a group chat feel like you are eavesdropping on a group of real people– no small achievement, given that adding in sections of ‘text message dialogue’ can often feel like lazy shorthand, or shoehorned in, if not handled well. The result is authentic, meaningful conversations which move the book along and feel as if they have been lifted straight from real life – despite the fact that they are talking about time travel.
The time travel aspect itself would most likely not hold up to detailed scrutiny, though Moriarty has been careful about how she approaches this. The staff at the agency don’t seem to fully understand it themselves, invented as it has been by an eccentric scientist who occasionally drops in to visit the team. Like in any good story involving breaking the laws of the universe, there are rules attached – and this element reminded me at times of the rules of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, the Japanese bestseller by Toshikazu Kawaguchi.
Among the most important of these rules? You can only travel to the past, and you can’t change anything in your own reality. If you travel in the full sense, dressed up in meticulously researched costumes, the only changes you make will be to another version of the timeline, created when a different choice is made from the one in your own timeline. Time travellers are also cautioned not to stay too long, and the staff eat plenty of cakes and pastries to ward off ‘time lag.’ Another comparison from recent, fictional history might be The Ministry of Time, though the characters in Moriarty’s world don’t worry anywhere nearly so much about messing up the natural course of how things are supposed to go, and as Anna begins to develop her own ‘historical tours’, she chats to a young Frances Hodgson Burnett, debates love with Jane Austen, and frightens the Bronte sisters.
At over 500 pages, there is lots to explore and unpack in this delightful novel, which feels a little bit like a cosy scifi rom com, co-written by Richard Curtis. It doesn’t have a particularly Australian flavour despite being set in Sydney, but with so much packed into its plot, perhaps the more generic setting is for the best. Readers are bound to enjoy the moment when all of the puzzle pieces start to slot into place – so long as, like the characters, they can keep their hearts and minds open. It may only be early September, but I can already see this one making my books of the year list.
FIVE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Jaclyn Moriarty’s Time Travel for Beginners is out now through Ultimo Press. Grab yourself a copy from your local bookstore HERE.
