“All Our Wrong Todays” by Elan Mastai: A Book Review by Kyle Pollard
At year’s end I normally put together a best of list highlighting the top ten posts for the year. I am a little late putting that out, and everyone is fed up with top ten lists by now, so I forwent that exercise and instead decided to write a book review of my favorite novel of 2018.
Before reading this gem, I did massive amounts of research on the author, talked to my college advisor, and did some on the street interviews.
Seriously? Naw, that’s not how it happened at all. Picture this scene: I have three minutes before the library closes. I frantically run around the stacks looking for the science fiction genre stickers placed on the audiobooks. Eureka, I find one in time, run down to the checkout and out to my car where I put in CD number one, then CD two and so on. Within five minutes the words swept me away. Listening to the book was like adding another heaping helping of butter on toast already slathered with homemade jam.
First off, the novel is in the first person point of view in a quasi-memoir format featuring the character Tom Barren. The writing is funny, sharp, gritty and raw. Elan has this masterful way of sucking you into the novel and getting you to care about the protagonist. A connection between writer/reader must happen, or you will put the book down after the first chapter. Perhaps sooner. That’s the risk an author takes when employing the first person narrative. Mastai’s novel is so engrossing that I found myself breathing heavy at times while listening to the audiobook.
So, what’s it about? Time travel. Yep, you heard me right–the most overdone science fiction trope of them all. A writer that pens a first-person narrative about time travel and pulls it off has my respect. Fist Pump!
The main character Tom is from a 2016 timeline where the world has blossomed into a technology-based utopia complete with flying cars, space tourism; anything you can think of that should be in a techno-utopian society is there. Tom’s father invents the time machine and plans to use it for time travel tourism. In the utopian timeline, Tom is an outcast of sorts and has a terrible relationship with his father. He is cruising through life doing nothing in a society where creating something is everything. His life, while not uncomfortable, is aimless and basically sucks.
A mishap with the time machine sends him to an alternate timeline version of 2016 and screws up the entire fabric of the universe. The 2016 Tom winds up in is our 2016 with global warming, avocados that go bad, and a world where punk rock exists. In this timeline, however, Tom is a success, his dad is not an asshole maniac scientist, he has a sister, his mom is alive, and he finds love with Penny, the standoffish perfect female astronaut in utopian 2016. His quandary: Does he fix the timeline he destroyed, or does he stay in our 2016? You see when Tom altered the fabric of the universe billions of people died, and the ones who survived are not who they are supposed to be. They are all living the wrong todays. Perhaps all of us are living the wrong today this very moment?
The novel traverses other timelines and spans continents in Tom’s search for self, romance, and for what makes us human. Along the way, Elan Mastai fills his wonderful novel with epiphany after epiphany that forced me to reevaluate my life, my place in the universe, and come to grips with the person I have become. This novel will force you to look at the people around you as never before, and it portrays emotions with words like no other book I have read. Take for example this sample text:
Death is slippery. Our minds can’t latch onto it. Over time, you learn to accommodate the gap in your life that the loss opens up. Like a black hole, you know it’s there because it’s the spot from which no light escapes. And there’s the sinewy exhaustion, the physical toll of grief that you just can’t seem to sleep away.
Beautiful, huh? The book is constructed with layer upon layer of meaning such as the role of the writer in a techno-obsessed world. Is the novel dead? Is there any difference between memoir and fiction? A sci-fi romance that warps reality, human emotion, explores truth and even has an ending that satisfies.
Yes, this was my favorite read in 2018, and I hope you like it too!
Great review Kyle. I’m in complete agreement with you. It’s one of my favorite audio books of 2018. In fact, I liked the book so much I bought the hardbound edition. As part of my pre-writing ritual I type a chapter a day from the novel in an attempt to capture some of his writing techniques and style. It’s also a great way to re-experience a novel you love. It’s good that he writes short chapters or I’d spend most of my time typing the novel instead of writing.
I’ll suggest another audio book that I think is just as engrossing as this one, also time travel: A Gift of Time by Jerry Merritt. The narrator is superb. You might want to check it out.
Thanks for the praise, Richard! It means a lot! I also bought the book after returning the audiobook to the library. That’s a great idea about typing his chapters. I may try that myself.
I will take a look at A Gift of Time by Jerry Merritt. Thanks for the heads up on that.