How to Stop Time
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4.3 • 920 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
*THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN, Matt Haig’s new novel from the world of The Midnight Library, is arriving in May 2026*
If you loved The Midnight Library, read How to Stop Time next!
HOW MANY LIFETIMES DOES IT TAKE TO LEARN HOW TO LIVE?
Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old history teacher, but he’s 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 stay one step ahead of his past – and stay alive. The only thing he must not do is fall in love.
But what if the one thing he can't have just happens to be the one thing that might save him?
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
How good is this book? Benedict Cumberbatch was signed to star in the film adaption even before its release. Matt Haig has updated a fairly familiar idea—a band of immortals battling their extraordinary fate—and carved a deeply affecting, totally charming novel. The story's lead, Tom Hazard, is a man who's been alive for centuries and lived everywhere (we particularly loved the pages spent in Elizabethan London), but he has always struggled to get over a forbidden love from Shakespearean times. Tom's plight had us bewitched from start to finish.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Tom Hazard doesn't age. Or, he does, but very, very slowly. He was born in France in 1581, but like other "albatrosses" (those who carry the burden of living forever), a century to him passes like a decade or less. In this enthralling quest through time, Haig (Reasons to Stay Alive) follows his protagonist through the Renaissance up to "now," when Tom works as a history teacher in London. As Tom goes on various recruiting missions for the Albatross Society, the setting of the story moves from Shakespeare's Globe to F. Scott Fitzgerald's Paris to Bisbee, Ariz., and other far reaches of the earth. The main rule of the Albatross Society is that, in order to stay protected from a group of scientists who want to study and confirm the existence of the albatrosses, an albatross cannot fall in love. And yet, all the while, Tom nurses a broken heart and searches for his long lost daughter, Marion, who is also an albatross. "Humans don't learn from history" is one of the lessons Tom learns, and, despite everything he witnesses over the expansiveness of history, nothing can cure him of lovesickness. His persistence through the centuries shows us that the quality of time matters more than the quantity lived.
Customer Reviews
A nice escape...
Bought this book on a Thursday and had finished it by the Sunday. At first I found the short chapters annoying but it results in making the book ‘hard to put down’ as you can rattle through it quite quickly. I’d definitely recommend this as a great holiday book and the idea behind it is original. Great story line that’s well written. If you’re in doubt about buying it then I’d say that it’s definitely worth taking a punt on.
Amazing
How to Stop Time transported me to an earlier period in my own life, a time when I used to love books and reading. Thanks for helping me find my way back Matt.
A rollercoaster
I always enjoy Matt Haig’s books because his imagination has no boundaries and can switch from fantastic children’s books to very original stories like How To Stop Time.
But I have found at times difficult to keep up with the fast switch of places and times and sometime felt rather dizzy . So my rating has a lot to do with my inability to keep pace with a story like this one. Nothing to take away from the originality of this book and the talent of his writer.