Hazards of Time Travel - Joyce Carol Oates

Description

An ingenious dystopian novel of one young woman’s resistance against the constraints of an oppressive society

When a recklessly idealistic girl in a dystopian future society dares to test the perimeters of her tightly controlled world, she is punished by being sent back in time to a region of North America – ‘Wainscotia, Wisconsin’ – that existed eighty years before. Cast adrift in time in this idyllic Midwestern town, she is set upon a course of ‘rehabilitation’ – but she falls in love with a fellow exile and starts to question the constraints of her new existence, with results that are both devastating and liberating.

Arresting and visionary, Hazards of Time Travel is an exquisitely wrought love story, a novel of harrowing discovery – and an oblique but powerful response to our current political climate.

Review

Being a lover of time travel novels I was immediately drawn to this book from the title alone.

We are introduced to a world in 2049 where NAS exists - The Northern American States. We find a cross between George Orwell's 1984 and The Handmaids Tale with a dystopian world nothing like our own.

Adriane is found to be a dissenter in this future world and her punishment is to be sent back to 1959 to get a good University education. I still cannot fathom the reasoning behind this. Why would 80 years in the past provide a better education? When none of the progressive things she knows of have been invented.

Once Adriane is back in 1959 I started to enjoy this book (to begin with anyway). The description of her encountering a manual typewriter and looking for a plug was wonderful, as was her trying to use a dial phone. From time to time we begin to wonder if this time travel has actually taken place or is it a constructed reality? I'm still not sure.

Adriane is called Mary Ellen in 1959 America and takes Psychology 101. Whilst some of this was interesting, at times the book descends into such detail I felt like I was taking this course myself. Far too intense to be enjoyable for me.

There are certainly some thought provoking parts to this book. The politics of 1959 America and the world are beginning to run true again today. It wasn't really a book for me. It's a dystopian world with time travel bolted on and a coming of age love story in between psychology lectures.

I'm giving this book 3 out of 5 stars. My thanks to netgalley for e book to review.

Comments

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