The Time Quake
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Time itself is splintering. If the catastrophic consequences of time travel are now impossible to ignore, Lord Luxon only has eyes for its awesome possibilities. He has his sights set on no lesser prize than America. Abducted to 1763, Peter and Kate begin to understand that history has arrived at its tipping point. Adrift in time, Kate transforms into an oracle, able to see the future as easily as the past. While Gideon does all he can to help, he is tormented by the knowledge that The Tar Man, his nemesis, is also his own brother. As they pursue him through the dark streets of eighteenth-century London, and the time quakes begin, Peter realises that this monster may hold the fate of all of us in his hands.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A psychiatrist turns out to be his own most difficult case in this slackly plotted first novel from Nayman (after the collection Awake in the Dark). In 1947, Dr. Henry Harrison, the director of the New York City area insane asylum Shadowbrook, begins treating Bertram Reiner, a German-born biochemistry Ph.D. who fought for the U.S. during WWII and claims to have committed himself to hide from his brother, a former Nazi. Shortly after receiving a letter claiming to be from Bertram's brother's wife, Henry sees a trespasser on the Shadowbrook grounds and begins to think Bertram might be telling the truth. Henry is also struggling with his own ghosts: he's haunted by the memory of a young female patient whose tragic death caused Henry to start using opium; his marriage is failing; and he's increasingly attracted to a nurse. Nayman plumbs the murky ethics of the analyst-patient relationship and tackles moral questions of collaboration and guilt, but her story struggles beneath a mountain of metaphysical weight. Meanwhile, philosophical allusions pile up as increasingly implausible plot twists and awkwardly timed flashbacks prevent this novel from becoming the psychological thriller it aspires to be.
