Time to Burn
The writing duo Ellery Lloyd’s arresting Time to Burn begins with a splendidly bad idea: selling time travel to rich people.
This is the premise of billionaire inventor Inigo Frank’s company, Tempus Tours. Tempus—and what could go wrong with this?—sends wildly wealthy clients into the past, albeit under strict government rules. Crucially, travelers may visit only periods Tempus and the government believe are fully known. Thus, currently no one can travel any further back than World War II. The clients, naturally, sign reams of documents promising merely to observe and never to change anything.
Documentary filmmaker Phoebe Hunt has been hired to make a film about Inigo and the business, and on her first day she watches businessman Harry Allen and his family depart for and then return from a celebratory dinner at London’s Café de Paris in 1941. On their return, the portal opens. Almost all the travelers come through battered and bloody. Harry’s daughter-in-law, Sasha, however, does not.
Tempus assumes Sasha has been lost during the Blitz. Phoebe is not so sure. A little time spent on social media shows Phoebe that Sasha is not who she claims to be. Could she have stayed behind deliberately? Is Sasha trying to change the past? The present? Phoebe is determined to find out.
The novel moves between 1941, 2007, and the present. Phoebe and Sasha narrate, while footage from an earlier documentary Phoebe made about her rather famous father gradually reveals what happened when Phoebe and Sasha were young. There is a lot to keep straight here, yet I never needed to pause to untangle timelines or remember who knew what. Lloyd’s grasp of the story is absolute—it all made clear sense to me.
Inigo, of course, is familiar to the modern reader. He is a technobillionaire, and is supremely confident in his invention and in his right to unleash it on the world. Lloyd does not need to exaggerate him or the dangers his arrogance has unleashed. He created time travel because he could. The ethical issues it raises, the dangers it could create—these don’t really concern him. He’s sure he’s got it all under control.
And though Sasha isn’t Inigo, she too has an agenda. She’s in 1941 in London for specific reasons. Sasha’s alterations to 1941 produce differences in the present, some small and others anything but. But Phoebe remembers the world as it was before and is determined to check Sasha. One of the novel’s many joys is watching two smart women fight for the lives they each want.
I don’t want to say much more about this marvelous yarn other than to say it’s one of the best time-travel novels I’ve ever read. It’s also a love story, a study on family dynamics, and a subtle treatise on money, class, power, and perception. It’s original, smart, and very hard to put down. Reading it was pure pleasure.