Set in London in 1888, this novel tells three intertwined stories: one about the loss suffered by someone who loved one of Jack the Ripper’s victims; another about a young woman who wants to escape to the future where she can be more than her present time and culture will allow and finally the story of H.G. Wells and the effect that writing The Time Machine had on the imagination of his time and his own life.

Andrew Harrington, who fell in love with a common prostitute named Marie, is devastated to find out that she has become one of Jack the Ripper’s victims and that he may have even seen the murderer in the alley as he left Marie for the last time. Unable to cope with the loss, he sinks farther and farther into depression until his close friend Charles tells him about The Time Machine  written by H. G. Wells and gives him hope that by going back in time he might be able to at least save Marie.

Claire Haggerty cannot seem to find her place in the world.  She feels that she has the capacity to be so much more than what her class and time allow, but she cannot imagine a way out. One day she hears about Murray’s Time Travel which promises to transport you to the year 2000 to observe the final battle between humans and the automatons. Intrigued by the possibility of seeing the future Claire and her friend book a trip on one of the first transports.

As both Andrew and Claire try to make sense of their lives, H.G. Wells is trying to figure out how to live his.  Saddled with a very complicated personal life, Wells struggles to find the time to write and support himself and his family.  Lacking the literary cache of some of the more popular writers of his time like, Arthur Conan Doyle, he also longs for recognition.

What would happen to the future if we change the past? Palma explores both the desire to go back and change the terrible events that cause loss and suffering and the longing to escape our present circumstances which control and confine us.  Along the way he allows us to meet great people of the time, like Joseph Merrick, the Elephant man and other literary figures contemporary to Wells.

Palma does a great job in bringing this diverse group of characters to life and evokes a great sense of time and place with his wonderful descriptions of life in and around London. He breathes life into H. G. Wells and allows us to see the man rather than just the author, which makes him a full character in the story rather than a real person who is “name dropped” into the story.

This was a much more satisfying book than Ridgeway’s, River of No Return because Palma works with the themes of time travel and our infatuation with being able to change our past or our future and promises more in his next installment, The Map of the Sky.  But this is a cautionary tale as well, for as Wells says, ” if we had machines that allowed us to correct all of our mistakes, even the most foolish ones, we should live in a world of irresponsible people.”  

Brenda’s Rating ***(3 Stars out of 5)

Recommend this book to : Lauren, Marian and Sharon

Book Study Worthy? Yes

Read in ebook format.