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There's an unobtrusive storefront in Sydney called "The Time Travel Agency," which claims to be selling expensive trips back in time. Anna, the new employee, is designing tours to give customers the chance to meet historic authors like Frances Hodgson Burnett ("The Secret Garden") and the Brontës. Teddy, a customer, wants to revisit his own recent past to figure out why his wife cheated on him with his brother. Jade, who's taking a writing workshop above the Agency, rolls her eyes at the whole premise. But to be fair, so do some of the customers--most of them assume it's might be some kind of hypnosis or virtual reality, not real time travel.
This, from Anna's POV, is possibly a litmus test for who might enjoy this book:
On the other hand, if your reaction is to say "oh come on, there's a whole thing called 'social history' and plenty of scholarship that focuses on domestic life and family structures of the past," and roll your eyes, you may find this book overly twee. The first half or so is very cozy, and I use that term as a pejorative. Teddy does a lot of sitting around and talking (or texting) with his male friends who are there to help him emotionally process his wife's affair. Nobody ever gets boorish or off-color. I wouldn't quite call it "therapy speak," but in that vein. One character issues an ultimatum to another, "I need to cut you out of my life for my own health," a couple days later the second character turns up and they work together to rescue someone else in trouble with no repercussions.
Anna obsesses over Hodgson Burnett and designs twelve different tours of the past for clients before starting to branch out to other authors. I really don't think there are that many Frances Hodgson Burnett superfans in Sydney, especially if they're not convinced time travel is real. Her colleagues are always supportive and eating fun snacks. There's a mistaken-identity meet-cute that runs on for a while in an "I thought you knew that I was also X" "oh no, I didn't, how embarrassing!" way. And then there's a "troubleshooting" scene that's like, "if you get this error message, try entering this password. If this doesn't work, try the next one. And the next." And it's like...error messages do not work like that.
We're almost 60% through by the time this conversation happens:
Anna and Jade both have thirteen-year-old girls who are starting secondary school and dealing with all the friendship drama that ensues. So the girls' cliques and troubles at school seem to be the impetus for drawing these characters' plotlines together. Things take a swerve, however, that I didn't see coming. So points for creativity.
There are at least a few funny cameos from historical figures:
He became a Scottish accent, and a word. (Forever after, the word ameliorate would cause a strange sensation of loss in him--it had held him like a soft shell.) He was a glass of lemonade poured over a head; he was the head itself, bent over and shaking with mirth; he was the strands of hair, sticky and wet, droplets flying as the head shook. An umbrella jammed, a drumstick growing mildew, a dislodged sliding wardrobe door, a sunburned back slapped hard. He was a lime wedge pushed into the mouth of a bottle of Corona. A cherry tomato rolling underneath a fridge, a pinch to the back of the neck, a flood, a shadow, a snake, a king, a basketball bounced against a brick wall.
Ultimately, I don't think I was the target audience for this book, and if you read a lot of time travel/SF, you probably aren't either. But someone out there is.
Bingo: Published in 2026, Cat Squasher (much of which is text messages, e-mails, travelers' reviews, so it reads pretty quickly for 500+ pages). Possibly a good Vacation Spot for some people.
This, from Anna's POV, is possibly a litmus test for who might enjoy this book:
Part of the trouble was that history mostly lists political developments, declarations, and documents. There's so little of the day-to-day or domestic.
"That's because history is masculine," Paisley said. "It doesn't deal in beauty, nature, family, the heart."
If this resonated with you, you may be the target audience. Time travel is a conceit, but it's not what the book is about--it's about relationships, and grief, and parenting. I suspect Moriarty may have started with the end in mind, then worked backwards to say "you know what would sort of make this feasible? Time machines.""That's because history is masculine," Paisley said. "It doesn't deal in beauty, nature, family, the heart."
On the other hand, if your reaction is to say "oh come on, there's a whole thing called 'social history' and plenty of scholarship that focuses on domestic life and family structures of the past," and roll your eyes, you may find this book overly twee. The first half or so is very cozy, and I use that term as a pejorative. Teddy does a lot of sitting around and talking (or texting) with his male friends who are there to help him emotionally process his wife's affair. Nobody ever gets boorish or off-color. I wouldn't quite call it "therapy speak," but in that vein. One character issues an ultimatum to another, "I need to cut you out of my life for my own health," a couple days later the second character turns up and they work together to rescue someone else in trouble with no repercussions.
Anna obsesses over Hodgson Burnett and designs twelve different tours of the past for clients before starting to branch out to other authors. I really don't think there are that many Frances Hodgson Burnett superfans in Sydney, especially if they're not convinced time travel is real. Her colleagues are always supportive and eating fun snacks. There's a mistaken-identity meet-cute that runs on for a while in an "I thought you knew that I was also X" "oh no, I didn't, how embarrassing!" way. And then there's a "troubleshooting" scene that's like, "if you get this error message, try entering this password. If this doesn't work, try the next one. And the next." And it's like...error messages do not work like that.
We're almost 60% through by the time this conversation happens:
Paisley said she'd had a customer who wanted to witness the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815, and another who wanted to see Bloody Sunday in Ireland. What should we do, she wondered, about customers requesting close-ups of earthquakes, tsunamis, trench warfare, the Twin Towers?
"The question is whether it's like death porn to them," Joon suggested, "a snuff movie. Or they mean to watch from a respectful distance to...honor the victims?"
"Or as historical research," Paisley nodded.
I'm sorry, I can't suspend my disbelief that this would never have come up before. Just for "historical research" alone, is there no one interested in trying to solve historical mysteries? Witnessing the births of world religions and looking for evidence of "miraculous" events? The founder of time travel never shows up, she's always calling in via phone while cooking and sounding eccentrically distracted. When other scientists come to visit, she tries to explain her theories to them, but they can't follow her (it doesn't occur to her to try sending them in a time machine). Ultimately she winds up dispensing faux-profundity about how grief is necessary and we all have regrets because we're all just human. Yawn."The question is whether it's like death porn to them," Joon suggested, "a snuff movie. Or they mean to watch from a respectful distance to...honor the victims?"
"Or as historical research," Paisley nodded.
Anna and Jade both have thirteen-year-old girls who are starting secondary school and dealing with all the friendship drama that ensues. So the girls' cliques and troubles at school seem to be the impetus for drawing these characters' plotlines together. Things take a swerve, however, that I didn't see coming. So points for creativity.
There are at least a few funny cameos from historical figures:
"And Hemingway really tried to get you into bed?"
"I said I might consider it if he wrote multidimensional female characters and stopped taking himself so seriously."
(shades of "Midnight in Paris"!)"I said I might consider it if he wrote multidimensional female characters and stopped taking himself so seriously."
During that week I happened to be researching Virginia Woolf, who was genial when I met her in person, with a haughty, fluting voice and a sharp nose that actually suited her face perfectly--she was attractive. "And what happens to me in the end?" she inquired, having accepted that I was from the future in a glinting, "all right, I'll play along" way.
I told her it was against the rules to reveal an individual's destiny, and then I changed the subject, describing Zoom calls instead.
I told her it was against the rules to reveal an individual's destiny, and then I changed the subject, describing Zoom calls instead.
But there's also a lot of word salad:
He became a Scottish accent, and a word. (Forever after, the word ameliorate would cause a strange sensation of loss in him--it had held him like a soft shell.) He was a glass of lemonade poured over a head; he was the head itself, bent over and shaking with mirth; he was the strands of hair, sticky and wet, droplets flying as the head shook. An umbrella jammed, a drumstick growing mildew, a dislodged sliding wardrobe door, a sunburned back slapped hard. He was a lime wedge pushed into the mouth of a bottle of Corona. A cherry tomato rolling underneath a fridge, a pinch to the back of the neck, a flood, a shadow, a snake, a king, a basketball bounced against a brick wall.
Bingo: Published in 2026, Cat Squasher (much of which is text messages, e-mails, travelers' reviews, so it reads pretty quickly for 500+ pages). Possibly a good Vacation Spot for some people.
