Book Review: How to Stop Time / Matt Haig

 

Tom Hazard was born in  1581 with a weird disorder in which he only ages one year each 15 years. This creates a lot of havoc and some charges of witchcraft. When he loses his mother (she was placed on a ducking stool and drowned while the towns' people were determining if she was a witch. She died which "proved" that she wasn't, though the towns' people didn't believe that.)

Left on his own to figure out how to get by without aging, Tom does the best he can and finds himself falling in love with Rose - but despite moving around, people begin to talk when she ages and he doesn't. This story travels through time, mostly set in the 1500s, the second half of the 1800s, the 1920s and now. How would you live your life if you were Tom? How would aging so slowly change your perspective? And what can we learn from history? Are we destined to relive society's mistakes? 

I borrowed this book from the Nashua Public Library and enjoyed it so much that I have put on hold Matt Haig's next book - The Midnight Library.