Preview: How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

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I love time travel stories. One of my favorite books is Stephen King’s 11/22/63 about a time traveler working to prevent the assassination of JFK. I also used to watch CW’s The Flash, which featured a unique spin on time travel in the comic book world (check out season one but you can skip the rest). So I’m excited to check out another take on time travel with How to Stop Time by Matt Haig. 

How to Stop Time is described as a love story across the ages – and for the ages – about a man lost in time, the woman who could save him, and the lifetimes it can take to learn how to live. Released in the UK in 2017 by Canongate and published in the US in 2018 by Penguin, the book is also set to become a movie with the talented Benedict Cumberbatch.

Here’s the synopsis:

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Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he’s been alive for centuries. Tom has lived history–performing with Shakespeare, exploring the high seas with Captain Cook, and sharing cocktails with Fitzgerald. Now, he just wants an ordinary life.

So Tom moves back his to London, his old home, to become a high school history teacher–the perfect job for someone who has witnessed the city’s history first hand. Better yet, a captivating French teacher at his school seems fascinated by him. But the Albatross Society, the secretive group which protects people like Tom, has one rule: Never fall in love. As painful memories of his past and the erratic behavior of the Society’s watchful leader threaten to derail his new life and romance, the one thing he can’t have just happens to be the one thing that might save him. Tom will have to decide once and for all whether to remain stuck in the past, or finally begin living in the present.

How to Stop Time is a bighearted, wildly original novel about losing and finding yourself, the inevitability of change, and how with enough time to learn, we just might find happiness.

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Be sure to check out my spoiler-free review.