Time and Again

The author skillfully chips away at a puzzling mystery, while reveling in waves of nostalgia for the simpler lifestyles of the 19th century. The narrative is aimed specifically at residents of Manhattan, piling on references to buildings, institutions, fashions, and prejudices as they are now and were in 1882, backed up with drawings and photographs of that by-gone era. I am not a Manhattanite, so much of the allure probably flew over my head. Still the reader of a certain age can identify with some of it. His descriptions of stereoscopes brought back memories of playing with one I discovered in my great-grandmother's attic as a child. Like many historical novels, he introduced 'facts' that I questioned and had to look up: * New York had elevated trains in the 19th century, * Farmers tended crops on Manhattan island, * The right arm of the Statue of Liberty went on display in Madison Square Park while the rest of the statue was being assembled. All these turned out to be historically accurate. It is not much of a spoiler to admit that time travel is involved and the way the characters went about it was so tedious and needlessly slow, burdened by elaborate description, that the first third of the book was really hard to get through. He made up for that in the last third where the suspense made it hard to put down. I was also dissatisfied with the conclusion which relied on too many suspensions of disbelief for the average reader to swallow, especially his attempt to confront the 'grandfather paradox.'

Not a big time traveling fan but gave it a shot at the recommendation of another.

I tried to read this when I was a kid and I wasn't able to get through because I got bored, but the beautiful images of a man in long-ago New York stayed with me for decades, calling me back to finish it. I'm so glad I finally did.

It's a little weird as it requires no time machine or superpower to travel in time. And I was a little disappointed by the myopic view that the 1960s and 70s were so terrible compared with the 1880s when people constantly died of diseases and mishaps that were very much curable in the 1970s. But overall, it's full of so many beautiful descriptions of New York City, especially considering the 1960s descriptions are just as foreign to me as the 1880s descriptions. And there was some action and adventure about 2/3rds of the way through the book to keep it hopping. And the final ending was so casually twisted. I loved it.