REVIEW: Time and Again by Jack Finney
When this book appeared in the Daily Deals sometime last year, I snapped it up. I had first heard of it a long time ago and been intrigued. A time-travel novel with romantic elements? Right in my wheelhouse. I don’t read many time-travel romances, but two of my favorite novels – Outlander and The Time-Traveler’s Wife – feature time travel and strong romances. Checking the Amazon ratings – trepidatiously, to avoid spoilers – I saw that of the 600+ reviews, more than half were 5-star. I was sure that I’d love Time and Again.
I was wrong.
Simon Morley, our narrator, is a 20-something artist working in advertising in New York City in 1970. One day he’s approached by a mysterious man about a secret government project. Apparently based on testing that occurred years earlier, when Si was in the army, he’s been identified as a good candidate for the project. Cautiously agreeing to meet the man, Major Ruben Prien, at the project’s headquarters in Brooklyn the next day, Si quits his job and sets off on a venture into the unknown.
The project turns out to involve time-travel, accomplished not by futuristic machines or magic stones but by something much simpler: self-hypnosis aided by and combined with a recreation of period detail down to the smallest instance.
This was the first problem I had with Time and Again. Self-hypnosis? On the one hand, the mechanism is elegant in its simplicity. On the other, there are a lot of things about it that stretched credulity. For one thing, a lot supposedly depended on recreating an atmosphere of the time and place the time-traveler plans to travel to exactly. But I was never quite sure why – was it just meant to be a psychological aid to the self-hypnosis? If it had any more significant function, then the project leaders seemed to be overestimating their ability to recreate the past *exactly*. I mean, you can rent an apartment for Si in the Dakota building (as they do), and you can stock it with only the accouterments that would have been available in 1882 (the period Si wants to try to visit; more on that in a moment). But you can’t do anything about the fact that there are cars whizzing by outside his window or that the air quality is different than it would have been 88 years earlier or about differences in the weather or a million other little details that the story ignores in favor of going into minute detail about how Si dresses, what reproduced newspapers he reads and what period-appropriate food he cooks for himself (he settles into the Dakota for several days before attempting the self-hypnosis that will send him back in time).
My point, I guess, is that I’d have much preferred it if the story simply focused on the self-hypnosis angle without the endless excruciating minutiae detailing how the recreation was accomplished (unfortunately, this was not the last of the author’s penchant for endless excruciating minutiae – far from it).
Anyway, Si has a reason for wanting to travel back to that specific time and place, and the leaders of the project don’t mind him switching his destination from historical San Francisco (their first destination for him) to New York (they’re a little loosey-goosey, at least at first, with their goals; I didn’t find this entirely realistic for a government agency overseeing an expensive and top-secret project). Si’s girlfriend, Kate, has a family mystery that goes back to the mailing of a letter in NYC on a specific date in 1882. Her grandfather, who had killed himself in Montana years before she was born, died in possession of a letter that had been mailed to him (the date and location of the mailing were gleaned from the letter’s postmark) when he still lived in New York. Along with the seemingly innocuous business letter, the man left a suicide note stating that the sending of that letter had led to “the destruction by fire of the entire World.” This mystery has haunted Kate and has caught Si’s imagination too; he wants to see who mailed the letter that day in 1882.
After staying in his 1882-ified apartment for several days in 1970 Si attempts to self-hypnotize himself back in time. He is successful in making a very short trip, leaving his apartment and walking in Central Park briefly one snowy night. On the next, longer trip, Kate accompanies him and they witness the mailing of the letter (I never understood exactly the point of having her make the trip back with him; it didn’t add anything to the story and it detracted from the idea that the time-travel was something that certain individuals were constitutionally suited for and which needed to be prepared for scrupulously).
Between visits, Si debriefs the project leaders, who are naturally excited by his success. None of the other people involved in the project have had comparable results, though a couple have achieved brief success. Si becomes even more convinced that he needs to solve the mystery of the letter, so the next time he goes back he goes to the boarding house where the letter-mailer resides (he and Kate having followed the man after the mailing of the letter) and takes a room there. He discovers that the man is named Jake Pickering, and meets Julia Charbonneau, the niece of the boarding house owner. Si finds himself drawn to Julia, but Jake Pickering considers her his fiancee (though she hasn’t agreed to marry him yet), and he’s possessive and jealous of Si.
There were a lot of things that I didn’t like about this book, large and small. For one, I found the sexism and the male-dominated world hard to take. I mean, I guess this is not the author’s fault; it’s probably on me that I expected 1970 to be more like 2015 than 1870, but all of the project leads are men; the only women around are their “girls”, aka secretaries (there is one female training for time travel who is briefly seen and referenced). Further, Si evaluates and describes pretty much every woman he meets or even sees on her physical attractiveness. I got sick of hearing about womens’ legs or their figures or even just their faces. I know he’s supposed to be a healthy young heterosexual male, but I still didn’t want to hear it, after a while (actually, a pretty short while). It just rankled me, in a way that reading casual sexism in a book written in 1870 wouldn’t have (at least not as much).
In general, though the book was written in 1970, it feels more old-fashioned than that – the closest anyone gets to swearing is the exclamation “crysakes!” which several characters use (and which I’ve never heard of before). Also, the relationship between Si and Kate – one that he thinks is heading towards marriage – is oddly chaste. I wasn’t expecting (and didn’t need) a sex scene, but the one night they spend together in his Dakota apartment, the sleeping arrangements are oddly elided over, with Si telling Kate good night and that he would see her in the morning, implying that they wouldn’t be sleeping in the same bed. Maybe I’m overestimating the swinging atmosphere of end-of-60s metropolitan American life (if so, Mad Men has lied to me), but the puritanism felt artificial.
Honestly, this was one of those books that for whatever reason was just chock full of dozens of things that bugged me, large and small. This tends to happen when a story doesn’t engage me. (Though it’s kind of a chicken/egg proposition – are the little things bugging me because I’m not absorbed in the story, or am I not absorbed in the story because the little irritations make it impossible for me to be?) The plot seemed to have its own convenient internal logic that often didn’t make sense to me; the characters think and act in certain ways that end up being right because the book says they’re right.
One example: it was never clear to me exactly why Si was chosen for this project. Again, it’s implied that some sort of tests Si took in the army led the government to classify him as having potential. And it’s true that as an artist he has a good eye for detail, which seems to be a requirement for the self-hypnosis and mental recreation of different time periods. But late in the book he observes that he’s “not good under pressure”, and it’s true that from practically the beginning Si says and does things that make him stand out in the past; he seems to give little or no thought to being conscious of what he says (like, he literally doesn’t seem to care if he says and does odd things). He references Czechoslovakia (which did not exist in 1882), fingerprints, and a host of other things that make the people around him view him with suspicion. He shows poor judgment – letting Julia come along with him on a dangerous mission to spy on the villain, and later, when the two of them are on the run from the cops, never considering that he has a perfect hiding place in his apartment at the Dakota (I may have indulged in some yelling at the book at that point; the hiding place seemed so obvious and yet it’s never referenced or mentioned as a possibility).
If it were just Si that didn’t think logically it might’ve been less bothersome as a personal character trait (though still troubling considering that he’s our first-person protagonist), but all the characters are like this. The project organizers have a haphazard way of determining that the time travelers haven’t created any sort of “butterfly effect” with their travels (with the way Si bumbles through 1880s Manhattan, it’s a miracle that he doesn’t): during the debriefings, they check on a limited number of facts that the traveler remembers – for instance, a guy that a particular time traveler went to school with. If that person can still be verified to exist, then they figure everything is okay. But again, the number of facts they check are limited – seemingly ridiculously so, to me. I didn’t see the point of even bothering, and was annoyed that everyone seemed absolutely sure that the travelers hadn’t changed *anything* based on this less than scientific method.
Julia, also, lacks sense- late in the book she assures Si that she will be okay without his protection because she now knows a dangerous secret about Jake Pickering that she will hold over his head. This seems to ignore that: 1) maybe knowing a dangerous secret about Jake Pickering is exactly what you don’t want; it makes you a threat to him and 2) Jake Pickering has proven himself to be vengeful and a little unhinged, as well as creepily possessive of Julia. But sure, Si agrees that Julia’s idea is a fine one.
Another of the great irritants of this novel was Si’s idealization of the past. Everything in 1882 New York is just so marvelous! People are so happy and full of hope for the future! Even brief encounters with some more downtrodden historical New Yorkers fail to put much of a dent in his enthusiasm or his belief that 1882 New York is vastly superior to 1970 New York. It struck me as a very naïve and unsophisticated comparison of the two time periods. He doesn’t seem to put much thought into penicillin or advances in indoor plumbing, never mind the relative difference in societal inequities between 1882 and 1970 (as a white man, maybe he isn’t as concerned about that last issue, but that’s not really a point in his favor).
Another example of Si’s odd naiveté is his attitude, late in the book, to the villain. He seems more amused by him than anything else, as if he’s a character in a movie Si is watching, rather than someone who actually wants to kill him: “I’m smiling because Jake is such a villain. It’s the first time I’ve ever even used the word, but it’s what he is, all right…I guess I’m also smiling because in spite of everything, I like him.” It’s such an odd attitude to have to a person who wants you dead.
Later on Si is concerned about an idea the project leaders have, to alter history, because it will involve exposing the villain. He’s less concerned about the butterfly effect consequences; he just doesn’t think it’s fair to ruin someone’s life, even someone, who again, WANTS TO KILL HIM, and who would only be exposed for the liar and blackmailer he really is. Si’s attitude entirely baffled me, especially when a bit later, he himself
Spoiler (Spoiler): Show
The author obviously has a lot of enthusiasm for the wonders of 19th century New York. I wonder if I would have found some of Si’s musings more significant if I knew the city better. But as it was, so many words and pages are devoted to really, really detailed descriptions of the sights and sounds of the past. This is what Madison Avenue looked like in 1970! And this is what it looked like in 1882! And on and on and on… the streets, the buildings, the way people dressed, what they ate – it just goes on seemingly endlessly and none of it was interesting to me. Si’s obvious relish in his surroundings started to have the opposite effect on me as a reader – the more excited he got about some picayune aspect of life in the past, the more I wondered what was so exciting about it.
So, if the preceding 2,400+ words haven’t made it clear, I didn’t like the book. I’m hesitant on a grade. It doesn’t feel like an “F” book, even though my dislike for it was probably at an “F” level. I can’t help but be influenced by how many people seem to love it (Audrey Niffenegger herself wrote the foreword to my edition!). So I’ll bump it up one level on the theory that it’s a case of an extreme mismatch between author and reader. My grade for Time and Again is a D.
Best,
Jennie
P.S. I forgot one last complaint! I was really tempted to dump the book at a certain point (actually, several points), but didn’t because: 1) I *hate* not finishing books; about the only time I can make myself quit a book is if it’s very early on and I convince myself that I’m just putting it down and may pick it up again and 2) I was interested in the mystery of the note and the phrase, “the destruction by fire of the entire World”, which led me to think there would be something bigger, something apocalyptic that was going to occur (rather than another description of a sandwich Si makes for himself). That turned out to be a total bust, more of a pun than anything. So yeah, that bugged me, too.
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I loved this book when I read it in the late ’70s. I haven’t reread it in years though, so it would be interesting to see what I think of it now (some many years later – gulp).
So I haven’t read this one, but there was a time-travel/Groundhog Day style book I read in the mid-80s, and it might have been published earlier. A guy keeps dying and waking up in his own past for a do-over. He dies (heart attack?) always on the same day, same time, but each time he wakes up a little bit closer to his present – so he’s a little older each time, and has a shorter do-over. Until of course he hits a loop and dies and wakes up at the same time.
I’ve wanted to reread that book for a long time – when I saw the title of your review I thought it was the book I wanted, but it’s not. Anyone remember the time travel/Groundhog Day style book I’m thinking of?
The description of this book reminds me of that Christopher Reeve time travel movie from forever ago. Somewhere in Time maybe? Now I’m probably going to spend the rest of the afternoon in a wormhole looking that up!
I read this in the late eighties and loved it. I haven’t reread it in a long time so I don’t know if I would feel that way now, but it really worked for me at the time. I think the 1882 New York setting was a huge part of its appeal to me– all the details that bored you fascinated me. I don’t know New York City that well, but I’ve been there a few times and it’s such an iconic place, as well as my favorite city in the U.S., so to envision it in the late 19th century was wondrous.
Also, some of the things that bothered you either didn’t register with me or didn’t bother me. I can’t remember what I thought of the sexism and don’t remember the villain’s part in the story, but I liked the idea of psychological time travel and I saw the way Sy had to arrange his apartment as a trick to help convince his mind that he was in another time. It couldn’t be a perfect reproduction but had to be as close as he could get it to enable him to do a number on himself.
I think the absence of premarital sex is to be expected in a book from this era, not because people didn’t have sex out of wedlock then, but because (at least in my reading experience) publishers rarely acknowledged it. The reason the blockbuster American romances of the late 1970s (Woodiwiss, Rogers etc.) made such waves was that they had actual sex scenes, and even then, the heroines weren’t usually willing except within marriage. I appreciated the understated romance in Time and Again, and didn’t really miss the sex.
Part of the appeal of this book is the detail. I remember reading a writing manual that pulled a description from Time and Again as an example of how to bring a setting to life, and pointed to the way a detail like the steam that formed from passerby’s exhalations helped make Sy’s arrival in the 19th century believable. The descriptions are precise and lifelike, and combined with the history they serve to transport the reader to a time when New York was very different from what it is today.
@Anna Richland: Are you thinking of Ken Grimwood’s Replay (good book, BTW)?
@autonomous:
YES! Replay – that was it. I hope it stands up after all these years!
Just put Replay on hold at my public library. Thanks!
I really like time travel + romance books, so it’s a shame this one doesn’t sound like it would work out for me! One of my favourites is Downtime by Tamara Allen, it’s m/m and is incredibly sweet without hand-waving the issues the protagonists face regarding their relationship.
Wow. Thanks for the warning.
I read this back in the 70s and loved it at the time. I don’t think I’d read any other time-travel books before that. The closest thing I can think of from that time was Anya Seton’s Green Darkness, which was more of a reincarnation thing. I haven’t read Time and Again since my initial read and actually remembered very little about it (except the bit you spoiler-tagged for some reason). The only negative I recall is a vague dissatisfaction on how it all hung together and the ultimate outcome. I didn’t take special note of the overt sexism, the prudery, or any of the other things you point out but, of course, I was very young at the time and it’s been decades since then. The times–and I–have changed a lot since then.
I, too, bought the ebook when it was on sale back in October thinking I’d revisit an old favorite. After your review, I’m sure glad I didn’t pay full price! It’s doubtful now that I’ll bother with it. Ugh.
I read this book 20+ years ago and absolutely loved it. But, reading your review I realized I remember almost nothing about it. I did remember the time travel by self-hypnosis part, probably because I thought it was so unbelievable. I still have a print copy. I may try to re-read and see if it still works for me.
@moody:
Yep, that one was called Somewhere In Time and it’s based on a Richard Matheson book (same title).
Grimwood’s Replay is still a favorite of mine. I hope you enjoy revisiting it, Anna Richland.
@Kareni: I almost want someone else to read it now to see if it’s just me or it really does have as many flaws as I think it does.
@Janine: I love NYC too, so I should have probably been more enamored of the descriptions, but…I guess I really didn’t like the writing. I don’t mind (I sometimes really enjoy, in fact) very detailed, descriptive writing. I wonder if part of it was that it was first-person, which made the minute observation feel less natural. I just know that I really didn’t like Si on a lot of levels, which pretty much doomed the book for me, I guess, even without the other issues.
@Anna Richland: Glad you found it – it sounds maybe depressing? Knowing that the main character will die in the end? But maybe not. I might look for it.
I read this entire review and most of the comments before realising that I did in fact once try to read this book. Maybe in the early 90s? I love time-travel stories. I even love the movie Timeline, that’s how much silly I’ll accept just to get some time travel. But I remember putting the book down with extreme intent never to touch it again after getting tired of the hero’s obsession with reducing women to their looks, outfits, stockings, shoes. I just couldn’t go on. It sounds like the story worked for some readers, but it wasn’t for me.
@Susan: Hah, I hated Green Darkness, too. I was sure I’d love it, but it was just kind of weird and unsettling and I don’t think I liked the writing. It’s put me off reading Katherine, honestly.
Like so many others, I read this when it came out, and remember loving it, loving it *for* the minutely detailed descriptions and self-hypnosis premise. Maybe I was more forgiving because I was living in NYC at the time, maybe I simply had no awareness of the problematic aspects of Si’s character.
I haven’t reconsidered re-reading it, though, mostly because I read the (many years later) sequel, FROM TIME TO TIME, which was a real wallbanger. Not only did it have most of the craft problems noted in this review, but
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Completely wipes out the conclusion of the first book, including having Si abandon the “love of his life” and their son because he’s bored, then goes to another time to flirt with another pretty girl, then tries to stop WWI (despite the massive angst over the “butterfly effect” in the first book) just … ’cause , then goes off on the Titanic, DESPITE KNOWING WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN.
Awful, just awful.
@Carolyne: Thank you! I’m glad I wasn’t the only one. I felt like the worth of the women he encountered was being evaluated based on how attractive he found them.
@hapax: I’d heard that the second book was disappointing to fans of the first. I’m not surprised that he was given a new romance – despite Time and Again being described as a good romance, I didn’t find it very romantic. For one thing, he had a relationship with Kate when he began to “fall for” Julia. That was resolved WAY too tidily when they both just decided that it wasn’t going to work out – no particular reason, they just mutually agreed that they weren’t that into each other. It was way too convenient, I thought, given it didn’t really match the way he’d described the relationship previously.
I had also wondered about Si’s decision to stay in the past, because it was a “more innocent time”, supposedly, given that a lot of the bad things that he knew would happen (like WWI) would still be presumably be occurring in his natural lifespan. It even occurred to me that if he had a son, not right away but maybe after 12 or 15 years or so, that son would be right at the age to get conscripted for the war. But as usual, Si never thought of any of these things.
@Jennie: A few years ago, I tried reading this book, but I set it down after a chapter. It struck me as dry and dull, and the “hero” seemed like a shallow idiot who creepily idealizes the Victorian era. I’m glad my initial impression was justified.
BTW, Si is supposedly an artist with an amazing eye for detail, but I vividly remember an old photograph in the book that’s supposed to represent Julia. It’s an Eastern European looking woman with a Gibson girl style upsweep, dating around 1905-1910 (I think she had a white high-necked dress too). Hairstyles and clothes circa 1882 were very different from they were in 1905, and since this is supposed to be from some supposed expert in Victoriana this pissed me off so much.
I also remember being infuriated by the second book, after loving the first. I probably read it at the right age and wouldn’t attempt it now.
I absolutely loved this book when I read it in the 90s. I was living in NYC at the time, so that was part of the appeal. The moment when he realises he can see the Natural History Museum from his window and he realised he actually did travel back in time–love that! I did reread it in the last few years and found it a little less compelling, but I still enjoyed it. I read it the way I read Agatha Christie, as a commentary on the time the book was written in (1970) as much as about the historical period. Agatha Christie has disturbingly casual antiSemitism in her preWW2 books, and while I find it unpleasant, I see it as an unfortunately accurate reflection of people at that time. Same with Finney’s view of women in 1970. The sequel to this was horrible, though. I think he wrote a third one too, but I can’t remember anything about it. My favourite Finney book is a novella he wrote, The Woodrow Wilson Dime. It’s a slapstickish parallel universe story that is very amusing.
@Jennie: I loved Green Darkness when I first read it, but I was a preteen (not the most discerning reader) and the version I read was one of my mother’s Reader’s Digest Condensed Books (if anyone remembers those gems). Not long afterwards, I did get my hands on an unabridged copy and couldn’t believe how much had been left out, but I still liked it. :-)
@Kate Hewitt: This is exactly why I like to read the older mysteries, for a peek at what things were “really” like at the time, inasmuch as it’s all still filtered thru a particular person’s lens. But I figure that the authors were trying to give what they thought was an accurate portrayal since anything that deviated too much would raise red flags in regards to the central mystery. If I ever do reread Time and Again, maybe that’s how I need to go into it, although I’m not sure that Finney would have been as concerned with accuracy for either time period.
At any rate, I’m glad for your review, Jennie, since it’s made me think about some of these old “classics” with a new perspective less tainted by my fond memories.
@Kate Hewitt: I think I also read the book as commentary on its time. Your comment reminded me of something else I had forgotten. Jack Finney is also the author of The Body Snatchers upon which the two movie versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers were based.
@Joanne Renaud: Interesting – I had not noticed that detail! The pictures in the book didn’t interest me terribly.
@Kate Hewitt: It’s not that I feel hugely judgmental of the sexism – I can put it into context – but it still bothers me and I don’t want to read it. I probably wouldn’t want to read Agatha Christie being anti-Semitic, either. I think I need for something to have been written before 1900 and have pretty mild sexism or prejudice in order for it not to disturb me. It’s probably hypocritical of me to be bothered based on how old the book is but I just expect a certain level of sexism and racism before the 20th century that I don’t after the turn of the century, even though I know people were plenty prejudiced then, too.
I think it also depends how it’s presented – one of the narrators of Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone is pretty sexist, but his lack of regard for female intellect is sort of played for laughs and I chose to see it as a quirk of the character rather than a prejudice of the author.
Just a note: “crysakes!” is a bowdlerization of “Christ’s sake!” I’ve seen things like that in a number of books of the era. I don’t know if writers had to find a way to slip their curse words by editors or what…
I just finished this book. I loved the 1880s minutiae, because the era from the 1880s to the 1920s is a major interest of mine. I disliked the sexism, too, but the book was published in 1970; almost 50 years ago. I was born in 1956, and calling women “girls” was very common in the 60s and into the 70s. At that time there would have been very few women in any position of authority in a major government project like the one described in the book . I’m not defending this, but that is how it was back then. It’s quite jarring to sensibilities in 2017, I realize, and I am glad that things have changed since 1970.
One thing that bugged me a lot–while Si is rhapsodizing over how beautiful women looked in those 1880s outfits, all I could think of was how incredibly uncomfortable they must have been, and how much the clothing limited women’s freedom of movement.
I was also skeptical that 1880s NYC was the paradise that Si says it was. I would not want to swim in the East River in the 1880s, and given that coal was used as a source of heat, I am sure that the air was dirty. There were lots of civil rights issues then–child labor, the treatment of minorities, and of course the status of women. Not to mention the state of medical care at that time. If Si and Julia had children back then, Julia would have delivered them without anesthetic. :-O
Because I would love to have a peep at 1880s NYC myself, I enjoyed that aspect of the book, but there were other elements that just didn’t work for me and I have zero desire to read the sequel.
Time and Again is one of my favorite books. The level of detail, for me at least, was fascinating. The author had a gift for description which some may have found tedious, but Finney’s writing brought the New York of that period to life, albeit through rose colored glasses. The book is a mystery, a time-travel story, a love story and a historical view of old New York all in one. In fact, for those of us in the second decade of the 21st century, it’s a time travel tale in two respects–we get to see New York in 1882 and 1970, a period sufficiently long ago as to seem quaint in many respects. The notion of a black president would have seemed astonishing then. The miracles Sy showed Julia (a TV with six channels) have been eclipsed by smartphones, computers, fax machines and cars which drive themselves. Some of Jennie’s criticisms are valid–the means by which Sy travels back in time for instance seems less believable when Julia, without any training, is able to go back to the 1880’s on her own. However, I have read this novel at least four times over the last twenty years and I’ve enjoyed it each time.
As for “Replay,” that’s a novel which will stay with the reader for a long, long time on an emotional level which Finney’s novel does not approach. I’ve read this book twice, crying at the exact same spot in the story each time. It will cause you to re-examine your own life and the choices you’ve made (and what might have been). Highly recommended!
I only read a few of the comments after “Jennie’s” pretentious, petty, overly analytical diatribe about “Time and Again” – a book loved by millions, including myself. So please, any of you who are taking this pontificating diva’s word as the final judgment on the definition of good literature – read it and make up your minds for yourselves, I beg you!
@Anna Richland: I think I remember this book! Doesn’t he meet a woman who’s also having a similar experience. And he finds out about her because there’s a movie that comes out before Star Wars that becomes really big and he doesn’t remember it from his original life? I was thinking it was called Time after Time, but then thought maybe Time and Again. My brother and I were talking about it recently, but neither was certain of the title, though we both thought it was a great read.
@Coreen Walker: The book Anna remembered is called Replay and the author is Ken Grimwood.