Helpful Score: 1
As someone with time interests and issues, this book spoke to me. It's not a sequential story; it's tiny speculative, detailed ideas about time and how it may or may not work. I spotted the plots from several novels and stories in here (Flashforward, Hyperion, Changing Planes, Before I Go to Sleep, the short story "Benjamin Button," and Ray Bradbury's short story "Frost and Fire," etc. - actually a lot of Bradbury's distilled ideas appear here).
The author presents these as thoughts Einstein might have had as he sat in the patent office, waiting for his day to begin. I can imagine that might have happened; each description has a dream-like quality to it.
What I enjoyed most about these speculations was the author's way of rendering them clear to the reader by offering both the bad (different) and the good (familiar) of each scenario. I have much to think about. And cry over. And yes, one or two, especially if you have children, will make you cry. Perhaps one of the saddest, not dealing particularly with our conception of the passage of time is best demonstrated in this quote from the amnesiac view of time : "Late at night, the wife and husband do not linger at the table to discuss the day's activities, their children's school, the bank account. Instead, they smile at one another, feel the warming blood, the ache between the legs as when they met the first time fifteen years ago. They find their bedroom, stumble past family photographs they do not recognize, and pass the night in lust. For it is only habit and memory that dulls the physical passion. Without memory, each night is the first night, each morning is the first morning, each kiss and touch are the first." If that doesn't make you despair about time, nothing will.
The author presents these as thoughts Einstein might have had as he sat in the patent office, waiting for his day to begin. I can imagine that might have happened; each description has a dream-like quality to it.
What I enjoyed most about these speculations was the author's way of rendering them clear to the reader by offering both the bad (different) and the good (familiar) of each scenario. I have much to think about. And cry over. And yes, one or two, especially if you have children, will make you cry. Perhaps one of the saddest, not dealing particularly with our conception of the passage of time is best demonstrated in this quote from the amnesiac view of time : "Late at night, the wife and husband do not linger at the table to discuss the day's activities, their children's school, the bank account. Instead, they smile at one another, feel the warming blood, the ache between the legs as when they met the first time fifteen years ago. They find their bedroom, stumble past family photographs they do not recognize, and pass the night in lust. For it is only habit and memory that dulls the physical passion. Without memory, each night is the first night, each morning is the first morning, each kiss and touch are the first." If that doesn't make you despair about time, nothing will.
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