Review: How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

Tom has only been in love once. In all his four centuries of life (yes, you read that correctly), he had only a single great love. Her name was Rose, and she was taken by the plague.

Tom’s life has been unconventional – apart from its phenomenal length, he has travelled all over the globe. A new country every eight years, to be exact. The reason for both these achievements is due to a condition which causes him to age incredibly slowly, appearing to freeze his features in youthfulness and giving the appearance of immortality. Yet Tom is not alone; there is an organisation of others with the same condition, hiding in plain sight. While the society helps its members to remain unnoticed, it seeks to destroy those who threaten it. Tom seeks a fresh start in London, where his love story began many years ago, yet the passage of time has done nothing to dull his painful memories.

How To Stop Time is an enjoyable story, albeit somewhat slow in parts (a reader with a short lifespan results in great impatience with plot developments). Apart from covering centuries of time, from Shakespeare’s era to the Prohibition, punks and Pluto being declassified as a planet, we travel across the globe with Tom, from his birth in France, to his current teaching post in London. The universe is contained within this book, and it is vast.

Tom’s constant battle with life – from self-loathing to boredom – is refreshingly relatable. His is not a world of amassed power, celebrity or taboo. Content to be under the radar at all times, and abiding by the rules of the society to which he belongs, one could almost say he is not living his (long) life to the fullest. His meander through time and geography amid continuous existential crisis is both profoundly moving and deeply frustrating. Though he has a myriad experiences and memories, he has no one to share them with, begging the question of what it is that makes life worthwhile – time, or someone to share it with?

How to Stop Time by Matt Haig is published by Canongate Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House