Reviewed by Ro
TITLE: Aunt Belle’s Time Travel and Collectibles
AUTHOR: Marshall Thornton
NARRATOR: Micheal Klashman
PUBLISHER: Kenmore Books
LENGTH: 3 hours, 33 minutes
RELEASE DATE: December 24, 2024
BLURB:
Where would you go if you could travel to any part of your past? That’s the question Terrance faces on his 45th birthday—and right away, he knows. He wants to go back to 1992 and not meet Mr. Wrong. But what begins as a journey to change the past becomes a trip to find the future. From the writer of Femme comes a story of best friends, time travel and going backward to move forward.
REVIEW:
First, I was so disappointed that time travel allows you only to go back to your past. My dreams of going back to meet Freddy Mercury went up in flames. Sigh. But that is the premise of this book, going back in time and correcting mistakes. On Terrance’s 45th birthday, he receives a discount card for one burrito per week from the burrito place his friend Suzanne owns. “It was a very lame gift.” He gets a collage of wedding photos from his friend Winston’s wedding from Winston himself. “As a birthday present, it kind of missed the mark.” From his friend Sean he gets an original 1989 Gameboy. Amazing, right?
The amazing comes when Terrance goes to Aunt Belle’s shop, where Sean bought the Gameboy, and discovers that the time travel claim is genuine. And so, for this 45th birthday, he wants to go back and erase the biggest mistake of his life, his ex, David. The time travel setup is very low-tech and has set rules. Mainly, you can only go back to your own past (sigh, no Freddy) and no matter how he tries, Terrance isn’t able to do what he wants.
The thing is, the past doesn’t cooperate when you want it to. David must not get Terrance’s phone number under any circumstances, so the decades spent with the meth addict, the money shelled out for rehab, the lying and cheating and stealing, the finally getting clean and then leaving Terrance for someone else, all of that will be avoided.
As Terrance goes back in time (more than once), things become clearer, but they don’t. Cryptic, I know. I found this funny and a little sad too, so much time lost. The story is less about science fiction time travel and more about time and what it takes to see what’s in front of you. Things you don’t know or other people’s secrets affect your present when you find them out in your past, and they can make your present (and so future) better.
Even if you can’t mess with your past.
This was my first experience listening to Michael Klashman and he did a fantastic job narrating. Of all things, Winston sounded exactly like I pictured him! All the voices were distinct, something very important to me, and they all sounded their ages. Lovely little audio.
RATING:
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