Reading Journal 2023: Time and Again

Reading Journal 2023: Time and Again
Author: Jack Finney

For a book that has been on my must read list for admittedly far too long, this landing in the good not great category might seem like an overt criticism, but it’s not. Good, even at times very good, is the fair assessment, not great is simply my expectations. Afterall, this is a time travel book that functions as a love letter to New York City with elements of Christmas written into the settinng. If there was a book written specifically for me, this would be it. If I could narrow it down, while I loved all the different aspects, including the old photographs, the way it imagines tlhe possibility of time travel, and the historical elements, I feel like I wanted more character and less mystery-adventure. I was ultimately more interested in the ideas and the concepts than the story.

Perhaps this was most felt in the set up, which follows a man facing his thirties with the nagging crisis of feeling like his life has thus far amounted to very little. Wondering about the current state of his life becomes the thing that carries him back into the past, and more specifically to a significant moment for him personally. As it happens, the opportunity to travel into the past comes at the hands of a secret governent project, one that finds his present personal crisis to be something that makes him a fitting candidate for their experiment.

The way the book works itself into the time travel motif is through the power of the mind. Thus there is ample opportunity for the book to explore things like nostalgia, memory, imagination, and our connection with time and place. This comes most alive and most celebrated when the book sinks itself into the old New York setting. Wandering the streets and gaining a sense of its sights and smells and energy is a true highlight of the story. The plot points that pull us back and forth in time tends to accentuate this rather than accenting it. I will say this however. The plotting is nicely structured to bring us to a fitting conclusion, with a particular element of the story functioning as a necessary and appropriate climax and conclusion.

To say it again, I would have been more enamored with a story that was content to narrow in on our main character’s personal journey and his relationship to the past, and even to the relationships he builds in the past, rather than one that is focused equally on the government agency and the different characters that form the larger mystery-adventure surrounding that. I was, however, perfectly content to go along for the ride given the elements we do get that satisfy my obsession with the three things listed above- time travel, New York, and Christmas. Thats the true selling point of Time and Again.