How to Stop Time: A Novel by Matt Haig (English) Paperback Book

Description: How to Stop Time by Matt Haig Tom Hazard has just move back to London to settle down and become a history teacher. But while he may look like an ordinary forty-one-year-old, owing to a rare condition, hes been alive for centuries. Unfortunately for Tom, the Albatross Society, the secretive group that protects people like him, has one rule: Never fall in love. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library, "a quirky romcom dusted with philosophical observations….A delightfully witty…poignant novel." (The Washington Post)Soon to be a TV series starring Benedict CumberbatchHow many lifetimes does it take to learn how to live?Dont miss Matt Haigs new novel The Life Impossible, coming September 2024Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old history teacher, but hes been alive for centuries. From Elizabethan England to Jazz-Age Paris, from New York to the South Seas, Tom has seen it all. As long as he keeps changing his identity he can keep one step ahead of his past - and stay alive. The only thing he must not do is fall in love . . . Author Biography Matt Haig is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Midnight Library and The Comfort Book, the internationally bestselling memoirs Reasons to Stay Alive and Notes on a Nervous Planet, and five other novels, including The Dead Fathers Club and The Possession of Mr. Cave, and several award-winning childrens books. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. Review "Matt Haigs latest book, How To Stop Time, is marvelous in every sense of the word. Clever, funny, poignant, and written with Haigs trademark blend of crystalline prose and deft storytelling, this is a book that stirs the heart and mind in equal measure. A hugely enjoyable read." —Deborah Harkness, author of The All Souls Trilogy"Inventive and heartfelt and unusual. . . . [How To Stop Time] made for a great summer read." —Kristin Hannah, New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale"Compelling and full of lifes big questions, How To Stop Time is a book you will not be able to put down." —Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Project"Haig remains a keen-eyed observer of contemporary life. . . his dialogue has snap and charm." —The New York Times"A wry, intriguing meditation on time and an eternal human challenge: how to relinquish the past and live fully in the present." —People"[How To Stop Time] is fantastic" —Brad Thor, New York Times bestselling author of Spy Master"A quirky romcom dusted with philosophical observations….A delightfully witty…poignant novel." —The Washington Post"Time is all about the moments, not the space between them. Haig has done a fine job of capturing a few beautiful ones like butterflies in a jar — instants of love or rage or heartbreak. And one of them is even the night that Tom Hazard spent drinking ale with Shakespeare." —NPR"The central character of the poignant new novel How to Stop Time is 41-year-old Tom Hazard, a man who has been alive for centuries, and who moves every eight years in order to avoid detection. As he settles into a new life in London, he realizes that the one thing that would derail his (very long) life—falling in love—might just be worth it." —Southern Living"A time traveling love story… [and] a coming-of-age tale that continues for centuries. Its The Time Travelers Wife meets The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, yet manages to be even more unique." —HelloGiggles"How to Stop Time is a clever, beautifully crafted novel about love, history, and the tangled mess that comes with trying to live a human life of any length." —Bustle"Matt Haig uses words like a tin-opener. We are the tin." —Jeanette Winterson, author of Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?"Haig has been gifted with a rare ability, which is to make the far-fetched – and even ridiculous – seem believable. His books tickle your mind and tug on your heart, and their pages slip by with beguiling ease. . . How to Stop Time will provoke wonder and delight." —The Guardian"But How to Stop Time is also a considered, heartfelt document, as you might expect from an author who wrote an internationally bestselling memoir of depression, Reasons to Stay Alive. It unfolds its secrets carefully: an action-packed but often sad story for slow, long-term thinkers. Wrapped inside this sci-fi school sitcom premise is a poetic manifesto of what really matters in the long run. One that Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg would do well to read." —Mashable"The lively creativity of Matt Haig continues to delight and enchant readers. In How to Stop Time, he offers a well-drawn cast of vivid characters embroiled in an inventive, fast-paced story that successfully blends fantasy, romance, comedy and adventure."—Shelf Awareness"Matt Haig is astounding." —Stephen Fry"Inventive, exciting, moving and bursting with insight about history, time and what it is to be human." —Kate Williams, author of Becoming Queen Victoria"I loved How to Stop Time, its a beautiful and necessary book. I feel very lucky to have read it. It is magical, intriguing, and at times, very sad. A triumph." —Marian Keyes, author of The Woman Who Stole My Life"I am in concert with Haigs fans as I read the book, turning pages for the story but also stopping to underline passages. I want to remember the lines. I want to read out loud to someone. Nothing like a love that lasts 400 years." —Publishers Weekly"How to Stop Time is a bittersweet story about the meaning of life."—Kirkus"An addictive, time-travelling tale which unfolds at a cracking pace" —The Bookseller (London), Book of the Month"An engaging story framed by a brooding meditation on time and meaning." —The Austin American-Statesman"Full of Haigs trademark humour and humanity, this is a wonderfully entertaining ride through centuries of adventure. Gloriously heart-warming." —Sunday Mirror (London)"A story youve been longing to read . . . Haigs proficiency in writing for children has lent a gentleness that cuts to the very heart of this work and its readers." —Evening Standard London), "The Best Books to Read This Summer""How to Stop Time is a worthy addition to the time-travel canon, hugely entertaining, quietly funny and, at its best moments, contemplative and brooding." —John Boyne, Irish Times (Dublin) Review Quote "Matt Haigs latest book, How To Stop Time , is marvelous in every sense of the word. Clever, funny, poignant, and written with Haigs trademark blend of crystalline prose and deft storytelling, this is a book that stirs the heart and mind in equal measure. A hugely enjoyable read." -- Deborah Harkness, author of The All Souls Trilogy "Inventive and heartfelt and unusual. . . . [ How To Stop Time ] made for a great summer read." -- Kristin Hannah, New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale "Compelling and full of lifes big questions, How To Stop Time is a book you will not be able to put down." --Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Project "Matt Haig has an empathy for the human condition, the light and the dark of it, and he uses the full palette to build his excellent stories." -- Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods "Haig remains a keen-eyed observer of contemporary life. . . his dialogue has snap and charm." -- The New York Times "A wry, intriguing meditation on time and an eternal human challenge: how to relinquish the past and live fully in the present." -- People "[ How To Stop Time ] is fantastic" --Brad Thor, New York Times bestselling author of Spy Master "A quirky romcom dusted with philosophical observations....A delightfully witty...poignant novel." -- The Washington Post "Time is all about the moments, not the space between them. Haig has done a fine job of capturing a few beautiful ones like butterflies in a jar -- instants of love or rage or heartbreak. And one of them is even the night that Tom Hazard spent drinking ale with Shakespeare." -- NPR "The central character of the poignant new novel How to Stop Time is 41-year-old Tom Hazard, a man who has been alive for centuries, and who moves every eight years in order to avoid detection. As he settles into a new life in London, he realizes that the one thing that would derail his (very long) life--falling in love--might just be worth it." -- Southern Living "A time traveling love story... [and] a coming-of-age tale that continues for centuries. Its The Time Travelers Wife meets The Curious Case of Benjamin Button , yet manages to be even more unique." -- HelloGiggles " How to Stop Time is a clever, beautifully crafted novel about love, history, and the tangled mess that comes with trying to live a human life of any length." -- Bustle "Matt Haig uses words like a tin-opener. We are the tin." -- Jeanette Winterson, author of Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? "Haig has been gifted with a rare ability, which is to make the far-fetched - and even ridiculous - seem believable. His books tickle your mind and tug on your heart, and their pages slip by with beguiling ease. . . How to Stop Time will provoke wonder and delight." -- The Guardian "But How to Stop Time is also a considered, heartfelt document, as you might expect from an author who wrote an internationally bestselling memoir of depression, Reasons to Stay Alive . It unfolds its secrets carefully: an action-packed but often sad story for slow, long-term thinkers. Wrapped inside this sci-fi school sitcom premise is a poetic manifesto of what really matters in the long run. One that Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg would do well to read." -- Mashable "The lively creativity of Matt Haig continues to delight and enchant readers. In How to Stop Time , he offers a well-drawn cast of vivid characters embroiled in an inventive, fast-paced story that successfully blends fantasy, romance, comedy and adventure."-- Shelf Awareness "Matt Haig is astounding." --Stephen Fry "Inventive, exciting, moving and bursting with insight about history, time and what it is to be human." --Kate Williams, author of Becoming Queen Victoria "I loved How to Stop Time , its a beautiful and necessary book. I feel very lucky to have read it. It is magical, intriguing, and at times, very sad. A triumph." --Marian Keyes, author of The Woman Who Stole My Life "I am in concert with Haigs fans as I read the book, turning pages for the story but also stopping to underline passages. I want to remember the lines. I want to read out loud to someone. Nothing like a love that lasts 400 years." -- Publishers Weekly " How to Stop Time is a bittersweet story about the meaning of life." -- Kirkus "An addictive, time-travelling tale which unfolds at a cracking pace" -- The Bookseller (London) , Book of the Month "An engaging story framed by a brooding meditation on time and meaning." -- The Austin American-Statesman "Full of Haigs trademark humour and humanity, this is a wonderfully entertaining ride through centuries of adventure. Gloriously heart-warming." -- Sunday Mirror (London) "A story youve been longing to read . . . Haigs proficiency in writing for children has lent a gentleness that cuts to the very heart of this work and its readers." --Evening Standard London), " The Best Books to Read This Summer" "How to Stop Time is a worthy addition to the time-travel canon, hugely entertaining, quietly funny and, at its best moments, contemplative and brooding." --John Boyne, Irish Times (Dublin) Excerpt from Book PART ONE Life Among the Mayflies I am old. That is the main thing to tell you. The thing you are least likely to believe. If you saw me you would probably think I was about forty, but you would be very wrong. I am old - old in the way that a tree, or a quahog clam, or a Renaissance painting is old. To give you an idea: I was born well over four hundred years ago on the third of March 1581, in my parents room, on the third floor of a small French chteau that used to be my home. It was a warm day, apparently, for the time of year, and my mother had asked her nurse to open all the windows. God smiled on you, my mother said. Though I think she might have added that - should He exist - the smile had been a frown ever since. My mother died a very long time ago. I, on the other hand, did not. You see, I have a condition. I thought of it as an illness for quite a while, but illness isnt really the right word. Illness suggests sickness, and wasting away. Better to say I have a condition. A rare one, but not unique. One that no one knows about until they have it. It is not in any official medical journals. Nor does it go by an official name. The first respected doctor to give it one, back in the1890s, called it anageria with a soft g, but, for reasons that will become clear, that never became public knowledge. The condition develops around puberty. What happens after that is, well, not much. Initially the sufferer of the condition wont notice they have it. After all, every day people wake up and see the same face they saw in the mirror yesterday. Day by day, week by week, even month by month, people dont change in very percep- tible ways. But as time goes by, at birthdays or other annual markers, people begin to notice you arent getting any older. The truth is, though, that the individual hasnt stopped ageing. They age exactly the same way. Just much slower. The speed of ageing among those with anageria fluctuates a little, but generally it is a 1:15 ratio. Sometimes it is a year every thirteen or fourteen years but with me it is closer to fifteen. So, we are not immortal. Our minds and bodies arent in stasis. Its just that, according to the latest, ever-changing science, various aspects of our ageing process - the molecular degeneration, the cross-linking between cells in a tissue, the cellular and molecular mutations (including, most significantly, to the nuclear DNA) - happen on another timeframe. My hair will go grey. I may go bald. Osteoarthritis and hearing loss are probable. My eyes are just as likely to suffer with age-related presbyopia. I will eventually lose muscle mass and mobility. A quirk of anageria is that it does tend to give you a heightened immune system, protecting you from many (not all) viral and bacte- rial infections, but ultimately even this begins to fade. Not to bore you with the science, but it seems our bone marrow produces more hematopoietic stem cells - the ones that lead to white blood cells - during our peak years, though it is important to note that this doesnt protect us from injury or malnutrition, and it doesnt last. So, dont think of me as a sexy vampire, stuck for ever at peak virility. Though I have to say it can feel like you are stuck for ever when, according to your appearance, only a decade passes between the death of Napoleon and the first man on the moon. One of the reasons people dont know about us is that most people arent prepared to believe it. Human beings, as a rule, simply dont accept things that dont fit their worldview. So you could say I am four hundred and thirty- nine years old easily enough, but the response would generally be are you mad?. Or, alternatively, death. Another reason people dont know about us is that were protected. By a kind of organisation. Anyone who does discover our secret, and believes it, tends to find their short lives are cut even shorter. So the danger isnt just from ordinary humans. Its also from within. Sri Lanka, three weeks ago Chandrika Seneviratne was lying under a tree, in the shade, a hundred metres or so behind the temple. Ants crawled over her wrinkled face. Her eyes were closed. I heard a rustling in the leaves above and looked up to see a monkey staring down at me with judging eyes. I had asked the tuk-tuk driver to take me monkey spotting at the temple. Hed told me this red-brown type with the near bald face was a rilewa monkey. Very endangered, the driver had said. There arent many left. This is their place. The monkey darted away. Disappeared among leaves. I felt the womans hand. It was cold. I imagined she had been lying here, unfound, for about a day. I kept hold of her hand and found myself weeping. The emotions were hard to pin down. A rising wave of regret, relief, sorrow and fear. I was sad that Chandrika wasnt here to answer my questions. But I was also relieved I didnt have to kill her. I knew shed have had to die. This relief became something else. It might have been the stress or the sun or it might have been the egg hoppas Id had for break- fast, but I was now vomiting. It was in that moment that it became clear to me. I cant do this any more . There was no phone reception at the temple, so I waited till I was back in my hotel room in the old fort town of Galle tucked inside my mosquito net sticky with heat, staring up at the pointlessly slow ceiling fan, before I phoned Hendrich. You did what you were supposed to do? he said. Yes, I said, which was halfway to being true. After all, the outcome had been the one hed asked for. She is dead. Then I asked what I always asked. Have you found her? No, he said, as always. We havent. Not yet. Yet . That word could trap you for decades. But this time, I had a new confidence. Now, Hendrich, please. I want an ordinary life. I dont want to do this. He sighed wearily. I need to see you. Its been too long. Los Angeles, two weeks ago Hendrich was back in Los Angeles. He hadnt lived there since the 1920s so he assumed it was pretty safe to do so and that no one was alive who would remember him from before. He had a large house in Brentwood that served as the headquarters for the Albatross Society. Brentwood was perfect for him. A geranium-scented land of large houses tucked behind high fences and walls and hedges, where the streets were free from pedestrians and everything, even the trees, looked perfect to the point of sterile. I was quite shocked, on seeing Hendrich, sitting beside his large pool on a sun-lounger, laptop on knee. Normally, Hendrich looked pretty much the same, but I couldnt help notice the change. He looked younger. Still old and arthritic, but, well, better than hed done in a century. Hi, Hendrich, I said, you look good. He nodded, as if this wasnt new information. Botox. And a brow lift. He wasnt even joking. In this life he was a former plastic surgeon. The back story was that after retiring he had moved from Miami to Los Angeles. That way he could avoid the issue of not having any former local clients. His name here was Harry Silverman. (Silverman. Dont you like it? It sounds like an ageing superhero. Which I kind of am.) I sat on the spare lounger. His maid, Rosella, came over with two sunset-coloured smoothies. I noticed his hands. They looked old. Liver spots and baggy skin and indigo veins. Faces could lie easier than hands could. Sea buckthorn. Its crazy. It tastes like shit. Try it. The amazing thing about Hendrich was that he kept thoroughly of the times. He always had done, I think. He certainly had been since the 1890s. Centuries ago, selling tulips, hed probably been the same. It was strange. He was older than any of us but he was always very much in the current of whatever zeitgeist was flowing around. The thing is, he said, in California, the only way to look like you are getting older is to look like you are getting younger. If you can move your forehead over the age of forty then people become very suspicious. He told me that he had been in Santa Barbara for a couple of years but he got a bit bored. Santa Barbara is pleasant. Its heaven, with a bit more traffic. But nothing ever happens in heaven. I had a place up in the hills. Drank the local wine every night. But I was going mad. I kept getting these panic attacks. I have lived for over seven centuries and never had a single panic attack. Ive witnessed wars and revolutions. Fine. But I get to Santa Barbara and there I was waking up in my comfortable villa with my heart going crazy and feeling like I was trapped inside myself. Los Angeles, though, is something else. Los Angeles calmed me right down, I can tell you . . . Feeling calm. That must be nice. He studied me for a while, as if I was an artwork with a hidden meaning. Whats the matter, Tom? Have you been missing me? Something like that. What is it? Was Iceland that bad? Id been living in Iceland for eight years before my brief assign- ment in Sri Lanka. It was lonely. Details ISBN0525522891 Author Matt Haig Short Title HT STOP TIME Pages 352 Language English ISBN-10 0525522891 ISBN-13 9780525522898 Format Paperback DEWEY 823.92 Year 2019 Subtitle A Novel Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2019-06-11 NZ Release Date 2019-06-11 US Release Date 2019-06-11 UK Release Date 2019-06-11 Publisher Penguin Putnam Inc Publication Date 2019-06-11 Imprint Penguin USA Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:124479924;

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