Grafting such thriller-like elements on to what is otherwise a rollicking time-hopping fantasy may sound convoluted, but the cleverness of How to Stop Time lies in how effortless Haig makes it feel. Of course, you think to yourself, this makes perfect sense: the anagerics (if they existed) would form a secret society ... Haig has been gifted with a rare ability, which is to make the far-fetched – and even ridiculous – seem believable. His books tickle your mind and tug on your heart, and their pages slip by with beguiling ease. Even before Benedict Cumberbatch goes voyaging across the centuries, How to Stop Time will provoke wonder and delight.
How To Stop Time plays like a meditation on the tick and tock of time and mortality. On the preciousness of every moment and the nightmare of having both too few and too many. There's a conspiracy element thrown in to give the plot a little kick, but it's a minor secondary plot until the book's final third, and serves as an armature to keep the laggier parts of the narrative upright ... suffers when it grows heavy and lingers too long in any one time or place, but in the moments when Haig allows his narrator to flit from moment, recalling spans of decades as if they were a long weekend, then land somewhere for a few paragraphs to describe Paris or New York at instants when they mattered to Tom and his tale, the book can be remarkably beautiful, achingly sad and completely alien all at once.
...part love story and part thriller, though not quite enough of either ... Haig remains a keen-eyed observer of contemporary life and his dialogue has snap and charm. In the past, however, he is on shakier ground; his characters seem to exist less in their historical surroundings than to have pushed their faces through the holes in painted carnival cutouts ... In the end, though, it is Tom himself who most bogs down the narrative. More than once he apologizes for his 'heaviness,' and with good reason. Weary of life, still grieving his dead wife some four centuries after her death, he makes for a frustratingly passive protagonist.
...a quirky romcom dusted with philosophical observations ... Haig brings a delightfully witty touch to this poignant novel. His hero is just like us, an ordinary 439-year-old guy trying to figure out 'how do you inhabit the now you are in? How do you stop the ghosts of all the other nows from getting in? How, in short, do you live?'
Hendrich is a physical manifestation of Tom’s fears of attachment and vulnerability, though he’s more comic book villain than sensitively rendered character ... The reader feels, when sunk into the novel, exactly as he does: immobilized and uncomfortably aware of it. One might sympathize more with Tom’s plight if the book weren’t so woefully explicit, and if the eventual lessons weren’t such easily conjured platitudes ... Despite its central conceit, How to Stop Time fails to convince that Tom is really a product of 400 years on Earth — all his referents and opinions are those of a middle-aged man in the present day.
Matt Haig has a real feeling for what it is to be an outsider, and makes you entirely believe in the weariness of the centuries-old 'albas' (albatrosses) secretly living among the rest of us giddily short-lived 'mays' (mayflies) ... From the difficulties of joining Facebook to knowing asides on the dreadful circularity of history, the novel milks its central conceit for all it is worth ... Conspiracy rears its head as a Bond-style baddie called Hendrich, a 900-year-old bully, claims to be protecting the albas from biotech entrepreneurs who want their stem cells. The energy and zip of this book are hard to resist. And it also provides the most convincing explanation yet for the skills of jazz pianists: they are, of course, 300 years old.
... the pacing of Matt Haig's newest novel reminded me of a screenplay more than a novel ... That's not a knock on How to Stop Time, but perhaps it does explain my lingering dissatisfaction with the thin mythos of the novel and the too-quick wrap-up at the end ... There are certainly delights to be found in How to Stop Time, despite its tendency to oversimplify. The story is intriguing even if it never quite fully rises to its potential ... The prose is strong and occasionally excellent, and there are some lovely quirks that allow the reader to experience, in some part, the strangeness of existing through centuries of change and development ... It's certainly entertaining to read about Tom stumbling into the realms of beloved famous individuals simply by virtue of being alive for centuries, but it strikes me as a failure to completely craft the world in which Tom, Hendrich, and everyone else lives...
Haig’s plot is obviously complex, but—a marvel of invention—it is seamlessly presented, telling an absolutely compelling story. It examines large issues—history, time, purpose, and more—but in an engagingly thought-provoking, compulsively readable way. It is, in every way, a triumph not to be missed.
Tom sometimes wallows overmuch about the changelessness of the human condition, and one might be forgiven for wondering why so much time has not done more to heal his oldest wounds. But Haig skillfully enlivens Tom’s history with spare, well-chosen detail, making much of the book transporting.
An engaging story framed by a brooding meditation on time and meaning.
...[an] enthralling quest through time ... His persistence through the centuries shows us that the quality of time matters more than the quantity lived.
