Paperback, 408 pages
Published May 17, 2022 by Random House Large Print.
Was easy to read - that's what I needed at this time, and enjoyed the characters and plot. A great author.
I found this touching and hopeful, I liked how poignantly the characters were drawn, and the themes of kindness and the vicissitudes of life.
My main complaint was that I think the simulation theory stuff was basically an unnecessary macguffin and didn't add to the themes (at least as far as they interested me).
Content warning Slight spoiler towards the end of the paragraph
… which is Goethe and translates as "one notices the intention and is disappointed". Which is the feeling I got from reading the book: While the sections set in the early 20th century work very well, the sci-fi settings have a forced and constructed feel; while the overall story arc makes sense, the details of the construction are visible too often (how everything is about what is real and what is virtual, about connection and loneliness, and in the end really only about the experience of Covid-19); and while the idea of using time travel as a plot device, not as the main topic, is great, there are just too many inconsistencies in how it is used (sometimes things happen the way they have always done because of some cross-time intervention, sometimes such an intervention causes things to change). Overall a nice read, but not much more.
I liked the story of isolated humans trying to find meaning in their lives, all tangled together and touched by the miraculous. It left me feeling hopeful and reassured.
a little overrated
I liked it because it was well written and short. Longer would have been boring, shorter would have cut too much. I wonder how the author's experience during the pandemic influenced the Last Book Tour Before the End of the World chapter (at least one discussion in the book was real—but from 2015). I liked this book very much, but I liked Station Eleven better, hence the 4 stars.
This book washed over me. I loved the story and the way it made me feel about family, about time. The way the different stories knit together, the moments of realization that the author flawlessly sets up and executes... all of it. Lovely.
Fantastic to a point I did not expect. Very meta, and covers aspects that took me by surprise. I rarely read the descriptions of books written by authors that I have read before, and here it totally paid off. If you have read the previous two works by this author, you will like where this book takes you.
