A refreshing and entertaining time-travel story that delivers on its premise
My first Diane Chamberlain...and I doubt I would've noticed it at all, except it has been everywhere and with the time-travel element (for which I am an absolute sucker), I decided I had to give it a try. I must admit, reading this came directly after my outraged feeling from finishing The Secret History, so it was really entertaining and refreshing, to say the least.
The writing was unremarkable but never boring, simple but not juvenile, and I thought the time-travel layering was rather nicely done—despite not being every complicated at all. I normally like a lot of complexity, but honestly, after the frustrations from reading The Secret History, I felt this was a welcome respite. I see in the Acknowledgments at the end that Chamberlain found this story to be more complex than her typical writing—and I completely get that, if this was her first foray into a time travel story, the overlay of several different time periods, having to consider the anachronisms that would be unintentional, and the balancing of actual calendars would understandably seem like a lot.
To get it down to the nitty gritty: It's 1970 and Caroline Sears has just lost her husband in the Vietnam War, right around the same time she learned she was pregnant with their first child. After a routine visit with her doctor, she is sent to a specialist where a state-of-the-art new technology called an ultrasound is performed and they are able to see a problem with the baby's heart that will, upon birth, lead to inevitable, fatal results. Devastated, Caroline is confronted by Hunter, her brother-in-law—whom she just met and introduced to her sister five years previously (and whose point-of-view we switch back to every now and then), who tells her that time travel is possible. He can send her to the future—specifically 2001—to have the life-saving fetal surgery to save her baby, which is obviously not available in 1970.
The main crux of the story is the time spent with Caroline, who goes by Carly, as she experiences a world thirty years in the future and works hard to save her baby. It's not a very introspective story, but I really enjoyed myself and seeing the year 2001 through Carly's eyes. There was a lot of unexpected tension for me around the time she's there...mostly late spring and into the summer of 2001. The reader knows that the events of 9/11 loom heavy in the future, but Carly doesn't and the tension really builds as the calendar gets closer to that time frame.
I don't know that I'll make a point to pick up other novels by Diane Chamberlain, but I love the time I spent with this novel of hers.
The writing was unremarkable but never boring, simple but not juvenile, and I thought the time-travel layering was rather nicely done—despite not being every complicated at all. I normally like a lot of complexity, but honestly, after the frustrations from reading The Secret History, I felt this was a welcome respite. I see in the Acknowledgments at the end that Chamberlain found this story to be more complex than her typical writing—and I completely get that, if this was her first foray into a time travel story, the overlay of several different time periods, having to consider the anachronisms that would be unintentional, and the balancing of actual calendars would understandably seem like a lot.
To get it down to the nitty gritty: It's 1970 and Caroline Sears has just lost her husband in the Vietnam War, right around the same time she learned she was pregnant with their first child. After a routine visit with her doctor, she is sent to a specialist where a state-of-the-art new technology called an ultrasound is performed and they are able to see a problem with the baby's heart that will, upon birth, lead to inevitable, fatal results. Devastated, Caroline is confronted by Hunter, her brother-in-law—whom she just met and introduced to her sister five years previously (and whose point-of-view we switch back to every now and then), who tells her that time travel is possible. He can send her to the future—specifically 2001—to have the life-saving fetal surgery to save her baby, which is obviously not available in 1970.
The main crux of the story is the time spent with Caroline, who goes by Carly, as she experiences a world thirty years in the future and works hard to save her baby. It's not a very introspective story, but I really enjoyed myself and seeing the year 2001 through Carly's eyes. There was a lot of unexpected tension for me around the time she's there...mostly late spring and into the summer of 2001. The reader knows that the events of 9/11 loom heavy in the future, but Carly doesn't and the tension really builds as the calendar gets closer to that time frame.
I don't know that I'll make a point to pick up other novels by Diane Chamberlain, but I love the time I spent with this novel of hers.