The Psychology of Time Travel

In 1967 four young women scientists - Barbara, Grace, Lucille and Margaret - are pioneering time travel, with some help from a rabbit called Patrick Troughton. What’s not to love about that? And that’s just the first few pages. It’s all going swimmingly until the press turn up and one of the women experiences a breakdown on camera.

Fifty years later, Barbara (Bee), who has lived for years with bipolar disorder, receives a cryptic message from the future and expresses a wish to time travel one more time; her psychologist granddaughter Ruby, concerned about what it means, seeks some answers. And a few months later a young woman, Odette, discovers an unidentified body in an inexplicably locked room...

Having read this sampler I’m now really excited about the full book. Thinking about time travel never fails to tie my brain up in knots, but I love it in spite of that (or maybe because of it). The plot is hugely thought provoking and the characters (an almost entirely female cast of characters, which is refreshingly unusual) are very engaging. Not to mention frequently alarming.

It’s a sampler, but it’s a substantial one with plenty to get your teeth into. The story moves between the past and an alternate present in which time travel is a reality, with the attendant effects on people and society.

There are many delightful touches reflecting the changes wrought by the technology (for instance, a time travel glossary purchased by Bee includes a word for “feeling angry with someone for things they won’t do wrong for years”). Fantastic.

It’s intriguing speculative fiction about time travel and its effects on the human psyche; I can’t wait to find out what happens next.