Review: The Book of Lost Hours

The Book of Lost Hours by Hayley Gelfuso
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The problem with this one for me is that I like my speculative fiction to give me a thoroughly-worked-out, consistent premise and have the plot arise from it, and this is the other way around. It has the feel of a book where the author knew where they wanted the plot to go, and the worldbuilding had to fit around that, even if it made no sense whatsoever.

The premise here is that there's a "time dimension" which is accessible in various ways - most commonly (in the 20th century, at least) by magical watches - where human memory is stored like a library. One of the main characters is Lisavet Levy, who, at the age of 11, is shoved into this dimension by her father - one of the few people who knows how to make the watches - for safety on what turns out to be Kristallnacht, while he goes off to get her brother so they can all escape to the US through the time dimension.

Her father never returns, and Lisavet grows up in the time dimension and learns from the ghostlike people there - the ones who haven't yet been put into books - and from her own experimentation how to visit the memories, where she learns languages and other useful skills. After a while, she's able to take objects from the memories for her own use, and they remain real when she brings them out, except they don't remain real to other people, except when they do.

Yes, there are other people who can enter the time dimension, known as "timekeepers," which is ironic because most of them are there to destroy books - which contain people's memories - thus destroying the memory other people have of the person, and their impact on history. Or something. It's not particularly clear or consistent, and it becomes obvious that the so-called "memories" are not just the memories individuals have (or had); Lisavet goes into one of her father's "memories," and it's not the way he always told the story, suggesting that the "memories" are in fact objective records of events, and that when someone messes with the "memories," they are changing history. Or are they just changing the perception people have of it? No; Lisavet leaves something in a "memory" which is then there in the real world, so these aren't actually memories at all. It's time travel. Which raises the question: Why are they associated with a specific person, when you can go into a room that the person whose "memory" it supposedly is hasn't been into and can't see into? Or go into their room, and another room in the same building that they probably haven't visited, while they're unconscious?

This is another part of what I mean by the plot driving the worldbuilding, even when it makes no sense: Lisavet doesn't have to eat and drink in the time dimension, presumably because if she did, the author would have to explain where the food and drink came from. (Why not the "memories," since she can take things from them? Yes, it takes her a while to gain that skill, but she could gain it sooner.) But she has to grow and age, because she starts out 11 years old, and she has to be older for key parts of the plot to happen, so her body gets bigger despite taking no nourishment. She doesn't excrete or sleep in the time dimension either. What's more, (view spoiler)[she doesn't menstruate - she says this specifically - and yet she gets pregnant, to an American man who comes into the time dimension on behalf of the CIA. While they are making love for the first time, the memory they are in "comes to an end" (whatever that means; isn't memory continuous while awake?), and she shifts them seamlessly into another one without using a book, but not long after this scene she's said to develop the ability to go into memories without using a book, and to keep this from her lover so that he won't freak out. (hide spoiler)]

Interwoven with Lisavet's story - going back and forth in time, as is appropriate for what is, let's be honest, a time travel novel - are several other characters: Amelia, a sullen teenager; her Uncle Ernest, a timekeeper; Moira, Ernest's boss in the secret agency that works with the time dimension from the US end; and Jack, head of the CIA, who's Moira's boss, and thoroughly despicable in every possible way. All of these people have complicated interrelationships which evolve or are revealed throughout the book.

I could probably have forgiven the... let's say rather improvised worldbuilding if the emotional beats had been sound, if I'd been moved and surprised and excited. But (and this may just be me) I wasn't. The twists didn't surprise me; one I saw coming from a little way off, and while I didn't see the other big one coming, when it arrived I thought it was a conventional choice. Big spoilers here: (view spoiler)[Lisavet and Moira are the same person, but they come across quite differently from each other. One is vulnerable, gentle, and innocent; the other is hard and dangerous and ends up killing two men who she knows well with no hesitation. Yes, there was a traumatic transition from one identity to the other, and a powerful motivation for the killing, but I still didn't completely buy it. Also, the scene where she picks the name "Moira". Moira is a very Irish name, and goes extremely well with "Donnelley", her assigned surname, but her explanation for choosing it - that it was her (Swiss) mother's name - struck me as implausible. As did the idea of a German Jewish woman who has carefully avoided finding out anything about the world since she was aged 11 convincingly portraying an American of Irish Catholic background who has grown up in that world. It feels to me - and I'm very likely wrong - that the decision that Moira was actually Lisavet came relatively late in the development of the book, when Moira's quite different personality was already established, and, once again, the backstory was forced in order to fit. Which, for me, it didn't. (hide spoiler)]

It is, with the occasional glitch, at least well edited. But the worldbuilding made no sense to me, and I never really came to care about the characters, to the point that I stopped reading at 75%, so it only gets three stars and no recommendation from me. Once again, claims in the blurb that something is for fans of something else prove hollow; I thought the The Ministry of Time was amazing, but this is no Ministry of Time.

I received a review copy via Netgalley.

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