Review: Time and Again by Jack Finney

Genre: Fiction
Series: Yes, next From Time to Time
Copyright: 1970
Publisher:  Simon  Schuster
Buy: Amazon

Summary:
Simon Morley is one of a very small number that is selected to be part of a project in New York City in the 1970s. This project believes that time is like a stream and we are only stuck in one place because we do not know enough of anther time to get off there. With some convincing of the project director and the board Simon, called Si, is going back to January 1882 in New York City. He has an apartment in the Dakota an old building which was around in 1882 and though it would have been on the outside of the city it was there. He prepares himself for the project by eating and dressing like they did during the time. It is not easy for him to disconnect himself from his own time but with a little help and lots of studying he is able to do it.

"You'll sleep for only a little while, Si. But it will be a marvelously restful sleep. Deep and dreamless. Restful as you've ever known. And when you wake, everything you know of the twentieth centery will be gone from you mind; it will dwindle to a motionless pinpoint deep in your brain, and lost to you....But you know what the world is like; you know very well. You know all about it. Why shouldn't you know what the world is like tonight, January 21, 1882? Because that is the date; that is the time we're in of course...Now hear what I say. I am going to give you a final, irrevocable instruction; you will hear it, you will obey it. You will sleep for twenty minutes. You will awake rested. You will go out for a walk. Just a little walk, a breath of air before you go to bed. You will be as careful as you possibly can be . . . that on one sees you. You will be absolutely certain to speak to no one. You will allow no act of yours, however small, to influence anyone in any way, however trivial." (p. 99-100)

Thus starts Si's adventures into 1882 to discover the mystery of a letter and a picture of a grave that Katie his girlfriend has wondered about her entire life.

"If a discussion of Court House Carrara should prove of interest to you, please appear in City Hall Part at half past twelve on Thursday next. In blue ink below the fold, in a large half-illegible scrawl, blot-stained in four places, it said: That the sending of this should cause the Destruction by Fire of the entire World (a world seemed to be missing here at the end of the top line where the paper was burned) seems well-nigh incredible. Yet it is so, and the Fault and the Guilt (another word missing in the burned area) mine, and can never be denied or escaped. So, with this wretched souvenir of that Event before me, I now end the life which should have ended then" (p. 72)

The grave stone is simple with no name just a nine pointed star within a circle all formed of dots. It had confused the decedents who did not know why such a thing would have been made. As did the letter that did not make sense to them.

Si is to go back and watch the mailing of the letter without interfering in what happens. The project starts small and grows with each trip Si makes to 1882, until the letter is decoded and Si is left with an important decision to make.

Feelings:
I had a really hard time liking this book to start with. Si really annoyed me at times. His attitudes were difficult to deal with because he thought of himself as good and self-riotous at times. I think this quote is a good example of how Si can be even when he doesn't realize what he is doing. It is clear to those reading yet not to others.

"I like women, I never run them down as somehow inferior to men, and I have a contempt for men who do. And I think, for one thing that women are just as principled as men--but they sure as hell aren't the same kind of principles. I knew I could trust Kate in virtually anything, relying on her absolutely, her sense of right and wrong as lively as mine. Yet now we argued interminably: Kate at the stove, where she'd taken over dinner preparations, I at the kitchen table, waiting; then, sharing my two chops, we continued the battle at dinner. ... With no trouble at all Kate saw through the transparency to the truth--the feminine truth--underneath the serious pretense. She knew this was really a great, big expensive fascinating toy; we were all of us playing with it, and like a determined tomboy on a playground shouldering her way into a circle of boys, she was damn well going to play, too." (p. 108)

This is the kind of attitude that made it hard for me to like Si. Although by the end of the book I did. I think for the most part this book might be better for the male reader than the female. It is in first person from a male perspective and it shows. That made it harder for me to read and really get into. I have a feeling I will read the next in the series because I did enjoy the contrast between the time periods and I liked the descriptions. I have to admit that sometimes the descriptions were over powering and really slowed the plot. However, I think that was a big part of the story, dwelling on the past and what comes of it.

I would recommend Time and Again by Jack Finney to men, but would really think twice before I suggested it to a woman just because of the narrator's views and how they made me feel.