"TIME / LIFE" by Catherine Mayer

 

An exploration of love in the face of loss.

Dory Silver, a journalist whose partner Morgen, a musician, is seriously, perhaps terminally, ill, is on stage to interview tech billionaire Elo Ó hAllmhuráin (pronounced O’Halloran) when he takes her into the future in his time machine to prove to her that time travel is possible. Unfortunately things go wrong. Stuck in the future, Dory remembers her life while trying to find a way to escape back to the past. 

It's a lot more than a homage to The Time Machine by H G Wells. It has a clever plot, alternating past and future, with a number of twists. 

There are elements of autofiction. The subtitle is "A Memoir by Dory Silver" and in the afterword, 'A Note from Catherine Mayer', the author continues the pretence that the narrative was sent to her by email. There are real people thoughout the plot eg Hayflick of the Hayflick limit (a maximum number of cell divisions enforcing a maximum human life span), Kurzweil the futurologist, and David Bowie. Both fictional Dory and real-life author Mayer have worked for TIME magazine. In particular there are a number of references to Andy Gill, late musician and member of the Gang of Four and Mayer's partner in real life, perhaps a prototype for the character of Morgen. All these things add verisimilitude (which is something a time travel narrative needs). 

There are a lot of moments where Mayer subtly plays with time. For example, it is suggested that Morgen has Covid even though he developed the disease before it emerged in China: time travel or coincidence? Dory, remembering her anonymity at university, thinks  “Ignorance and curiosity are the true comfort of strangers.” (part 1: 00:00) Dory in the future recalls this statement and thinks it is a quote but can’t remember who said it. Another little hint that the time of one's life can be convoluted.

Here are some more quotes from the text referring to time (and there are many more):

• “Every hour is happy hour. A smattering of customers, seated at the bar, abstracted and solitary, belied that message.” (part 1: 00:00)
• “Every slither of Life becomes memory ... Every memory dissolves. This too shall pass.” (part 1: 01:00)
• “The butterflies had quit the tree to flit in a haze of dandelion clocks.” (part 1: 02:00)
• “Nostalgia rarely survives close inspection. Zoom in on any period and it resolves into pixels, the good, the bad, the banal, the beautiful, all mixed together, as if in varying proportions.” (part 1: 03:00)

But where the book really takes off is in its exploration of the love between hard-bitten journalist Dory and the possibly dying Morgen. Love in the face of loss. It is tender, it is tragic, it is everyday. 

Characters

• As a largely autobiographical narrator-protagonist, the character of Dory Silver is very well developed. 
• Given that Morgen, Dory's partner, spends most of the time ill in bed, it must have been difficult to develop their character, but they nevertheless come across as three dimensional and real. I presume this is because they are based on Andy Gill, although they exist without pronouns and there's a hint that this might not be a cis relationship given that Dory states: “Our biologies may have ruled out natural conception, but nature can be circumvented.” (Part 2: 08:00). 
• The other main character, Elo the tech billionaire, a tech billionaire who has developed phones and tablets, computer games (one is called Morlocks, presumably in homage to The Time Machine), and a social media site called Fleet which fosters extremist views, transcends the initial satire to become considerably more complex and interesting. 

Selected quotes:

•  “Expecting, people call her condition. though she has glowered rather than glowed through these last long months, she takes no comfort in their expiration.” (part 1: 00:00)
• “In the few seconds it took to remove it, decipher the inscription, intimacy kit, and drop it back in its tray, the refrigerator charged her room.” (part 1: 00:00)
• “Hunger shook Dory awake in the morning, tapped her on the shoulder before she finished breakfast and lodged petitions every few minutes for the rest of the day.” (part 1: 05:00)
• “Cities tend to offer more and better insights into civilizations than rural areas.” (part 1: 05:00)
• “You eat what you are.” (Part 2: 08:00)
• “Unstructured time is the agar jelly in which ideas grow, no matter how dangerous these might prove.” (Part 2: 09:00) aka The devil makes work for idle hands.
• “Popular culture might depict cuckolds as avenging furies, but it's their unfaithful partners who behave as if they've been wronged.” (Part 2: 10:00)
• “She had assumed Elo to be criminally reckless in the way of many tycoons, their products and services faulty, their data -gathering dangerous, their contributions to climate change oversized, their wealth obscene.” (Part 2: 10:00)
• “Hatred is a virus that leaps from one host to another.” (Part 2: 10:00)

This debut novel is more than a remarkably intelligent contribution to the genre of time travel; it is also a eloquent and moving love letter to those lost through the pandemic.

May 2025; 213 pages

My pre-publication edition was issued by Renard Press in 2025

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God