11.22.63 by Stephen King

About the book

WHAT IF you could go back in time and change the course of history? WHAT IF the watershed moment you could change was the JFK assassination? 11.22.63, the date that Kennedy was shot – unless . . .

King takes his protagonist Jake Epping, a high school English teacher from Lisbon Falls, Maine, 2011, on a fascinating journey back to 1958 – from a world of mobile phones and iPods to a new world of Elvis and JFK, of Plymouth Fury cars and Lindy Hopping, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life – a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

With extraordinary imaginative power, King weaves the social, political and popular culture of his baby-boom American generation into a devastating exercise in escalating suspense.

Reviewed by Fareham Library 5.30

“This is a book most of us wouldn’t have chosen, but we were surprised that we did enjoy it. We liked the premise and the plot. We liked thinking back to life was in the 1960s. We agreed there was little character building and was a bit wordy in places”

star rating ****

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The Thief of Time by John Boyne

About the book

http://blogs.hants.gov.uk/libraries/bookgroupreviews/the-thief-of-time-by-john-boyd

Matthieu Zela has lived his life well. In fact, he’s lived several lives well. Because Matthew Zela’s life is characterised by one amazing fact: his body stopped ageing before the end of the eighteenth century.  Starting in 1758, a young Matthieu flees Paris after witnessing his mother’s brutal murder. His only companions are his younger brother Tomas and one true love, Dominique Sauvet. The story of his life takes us from the French Revolution to 1920s Hollywood, from the Great Exhibition to the Wall Street Crash, and by the end of the twentieth century, Matthieu has been an engineer, a rogue, a movie mogul, a soldier, a financier, a lover to many, a cable TV executive and much more besides.

Reviewed by Circuits

“An easy narrative style, but very disjointed and difficult to categorise. Fragmentary – needs to be read in one sitting

star rating **

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The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

About the book

This is the extraordinary love story of Clare and Henry who met when Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry suffers from a rare condition where his genetic clock periodically resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. In the face of this force they can neither prevent nor control, Henry and Clare’s struggle to lead normal lives is both intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.

Reviewed by Robins Book Group:

Love story with a ‘twist’. A way of using a concept lie time travel to explore a story of love, passion and loss.

Star rating: ***

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