HOW TO STOP TIME by Matt Haig

Tom Hazard has been alive for centuries due to an abnormality that causes him to age very slowly.  He has met Shakespeare and F. Scott Fitzgerald and has to keep moving so that people don’t start noticing that he still looks the same after years and years.  The love of his life, Rose, died of the plague, but they had a daughter, Marion, who inherited Tom’s condition.  The author definitely makes a case for not wanting to live forever, as all that keeps Tom going is his search for Marion.  Hendrich is the somewhat tyrannical head of the Albatross Society, which is a group of people with Tom’s condition.  Tom wrestles with doubt as to whether Hendrich really has his best interests at heart, but Tom thinks the society is his best chance for locating Marion.  The pace is not lively, as Tom constantly ponders whether he wants to continue living.  I get his fatigue with life, sort of, but he has the body of a 40-year-old.  His real problem is that he feels he can’t get too attached to people without divulging his condition eventually, knowing that they won’t believe him.  I think the premise here holds a lot of promise, but I don’t think the author makes the most of this semi-realistic alternative to time travel.  However, this book is way more convincing than Haig’s The Midnight Library, which also had a depressed protagonist, but I feel that this novel could have been so much more.