| Genre:Romance, Time travel, Fiction Main characters:Richard Collier, Elise McKenna Summary:After getting used to the idea that he has only four to six months left to live because of a brain tumor, Richard wants to spend the remainder of his days away from the pity of his loved ones. So he flips a coin to decide which road to take, hops in the car and drives away. He stops for a while at a hotel on the beach called the Coronado. In order to pass some time he goes to visit an exposition of items from the past of the hotel. There he sees the photograph of a beautiful actress who performed there around 70 years ago and falls head over heels in love with her. So much so that he starts reading books about her (she was famous enough to have been the subject of books :) ). When he discovers that there was a major change in her life, a change inflicted by a man while she was staying at the very same hotel, he begins to strangely think that the man was himself. Mad as the idea seems, he started to look for ways to travel into the past. Strangely enough he actually succeeds (convincing his subconscious mind that he’s then instead of now) and manages to meet the actress and they both share two passionate days. They even make plans to get married, which would have meant rewriting the future, as in the books Richard read about her life there was no such thing. Unfortunately Richard discovers in one of his pockets a coin from his time and he’s thrown back to his hotel room, over seventy years away from her. He dies about a month away from the heartbreak, in the house of his brother who thinks the whole episode an illusion caused by the tumor in his brain (though he does have the letters she wrote him and the pocket watch she gave him). |
The love story is very intense and I liked both characters. The passionate lover who didn’t let anything, not even seventy years’ time, to stand between him and the girl he loved. The young actress who had never even dreamt about having such feelings for a man. There is also a movie made after this novel, with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. I saw it years ago and I don’t remember it almost at all but I’m very certain the characters in the movie cannot be as intense as the one on the book. :)
All in all I loved this book very much. Not only because of the love story but also because of the time paradoxes scattered here and there (such as when, while still in his time Richard looks at the hotel registry from that time and sees an R.C. Collier and feels for certain it is him, even though he never signs his name that way; then, when he actually got there and the time came to sign the record he signed it R.C. Collier so it would be the same name he will get to see years in the future). I also liked the way Richard notices everything around him, marking the differences between his time and the one he’s now in. I find it very credible, as more then once I found myself thinking I’d have done/thought the same way in a particular situation or another :)
Definitely a book worth reading.
Some quotes:
The boy who owned that face was beautiful; the word was used, he heard it all the time. What did it do to him? Grown-ups, strangers even-smiled at him and, sometimes, stroked his white-blond hair and stared at his angelic features. What did that do to him? Girls stared too. Obliquely, as a rule. Sometimes straight on. The little boy did lots of blushing. Bleeding too; bullies loved to punch that face. Unfortunately, the boy was long on suffering. It wasn’t till they pounded him into a corner so tight that even he lost his temper that he fought back. Poor kid didn’t ask for that face. He never tried to cash in on it. He was grateful to get older when most bullies change their tactics to less obvious ones.Hell, I’m sitting here talking about my own face. Why play the third-person game? It’s me, folks. Richard Collier. Very handsome. I can talk about it all I want. No one’s listening at the keyhole. There it is, world. Da-da-a-a! And what good did it ever do the guy behind it? Will it save him? Will that face rise up and slay the treacherous tumor?
——————-
Her breath was fiery across my cheek. “Oh, God,” she whispered. She was, literally, terrified. Something volcanic inside her was threatening to erupt and she dreaded to release it, thinking it destructive. “I don’t want to shock you, Richard. What if it engulfs you? It’s so strong, so strong. I’ve never shown a sign of it to anyone. It’s like a terrible starvation I have been negating all my life.” She stroked my cheeks with shaking hands. “I don’t want to swallow you alive with it. I don’t want to repel you or-”
I stopped her words with a kiss. She clutched herself against me like a drowning person. She seemed unable to catch her breath. She trembled uncontrollably, convulsively. “Let it out,” I told her. “Don’t be frightened of it. I’m
not. It’s not something to be frightened of. It’s beautiful, Elise. It’s you. You’re a woman. Let that woman have her freedom. Let her loose. Unbind her-and enjoy her. Feed, Elise. Don’t starve anymore. It isn’t shocking. It isn’t repelling. It’s wonderful-a miracle. Don’t hold it back another moment. Love, Elise. Love.”
——————-
I love you, Richard mine. Love you so that, were I outside, I would dance and collect a crowd and cheek a policeman and get took up and thoroughly disgrace myself with happiness. I would beat a drum and blow a horn and cover the walls of the world with twenty-four sheet posters all declaring that I love you, love you, love you!
As a bit of trivia, Elise’s favorite quote is “And love most sweet” which she says she’d heard in a hymn by Eddy Mary Baker. Richard then thinks something along the lines of “I’ll never tell you that you got the words wrong and I’ll never tell you what the rest of them are”. I’ve been quite curious about it and I looked it up. There’s no way of knowing for sure but I’m very certain that the hymn in question is the one called Love, ending with “And life most sweet, as heart to heart / Speaks kindly when we meet and part” :)
Written by the same author:
I Am Legend
What Dreams May Come
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