From the journal
"Difficult to Put the Book Down"
Having previously reviewed Replay by Ken Grimwood, I was approached by the author to provide a review of this book which uses a similar premise. Max Thorning is 42 and in a rut with his life. He works as an Auditor, is married to a woman he really doesn't love and has two young children. One day he finds an old book about the theory of time travel. He is obsessed with the book and finds some patterns that lead him to an address in Athens, Greece.
Max encounters Dr. Time who has a time machine that can both let him view any event of the past and to transfer his conscious to an earlier version of himself. Max feels he wants a total career change and that he would want to go to Medical School. That would require having a different high school curriculum so he decides to go back to when he was 16. Dr. Time warns him that if does go back, everything that happened in his life will change, which means that his children would cease to exist. Max thinks there would be a way around this and decides to go ahead.
Max takes a totally different path in his teenage life. Some of the things he does have little effect on anything and some things change his friends and family and some things cause a wider effect. Max calls his new life "Life II" and he previous life "Life I." Life II consists of Max trying to create a better life and not repeat mistakes that he knows will happen. This includes using his "adult" intelligence to act as marriage counseler to his parents, trying to have his sister make a better life for herself and finding out if he can really go through with remarrying his wife from Life I.
This book is fairly large but it is a real fast read. The author explores a lot of philosophical as well as psychological issues that Max faces and the inner torment he faces with things like losing his kids and sometimes "adversely" affecting those he knew in Life I. I found the book difficult to put down. I could not give this book a full five stars because several things are not resolved (perhaps there will be a sequel to this book). Also, I found it unbelieveable that Max would have such an obsession with the old book that he drops all he is doing to go to Athens and then with limited thought agrees to go back to his early self.
Max encounters Dr. Time who has a time machine that can both let him view any event of the past and to transfer his conscious to an earlier version of himself. Max feels he wants a total career change and that he would want to go to Medical School. That would require having a different high school curriculum so he decides to go back to when he was 16. Dr. Time warns him that if does go back, everything that happened in his life will change, which means that his children would cease to exist. Max thinks there would be a way around this and decides to go ahead.
Max takes a totally different path in his teenage life. Some of the things he does have little effect on anything and some things change his friends and family and some things cause a wider effect. Max calls his new life "Life II" and he previous life "Life I." Life II consists of Max trying to create a better life and not repeat mistakes that he knows will happen. This includes using his "adult" intelligence to act as marriage counseler to his parents, trying to have his sister make a better life for herself and finding out if he can really go through with remarrying his wife from Life I.
This book is fairly large but it is a real fast read. The author explores a lot of philosophical as well as psychological issues that Max faces and the inner torment he faces with things like losing his kids and sometimes "adversely" affecting those he knew in Life I. I found the book difficult to put down. I could not give this book a full five stars because several things are not resolved (perhaps there will be a sequel to this book). Also, I found it unbelieveable that Max would have such an obsession with the old book that he drops all he is doing to go to Athens and then with limited thought agrees to go back to his early self.