Reviews

"Sooner or later all utopias turn into historical novels."

This one will be my favorite in the International Booker Long List. It starts as a writer (who is also a character here) imagines Gaustine, a character who decides to build time shelters for people with Alzhemier's where each floor shall belong to a particular decade (there is something to be said about those poor souls who must truly feel out of place in modern world). At first, it is meant for people with dementia, but over time it grew popular among their relatives, and then it sorts of caught on. Parks and hotels start opening up that offer experiences from a particular decade, and the next thing you know, people of various decades of Europe are voting at national levels to return back to their favorite decades. Things go on to worsen but read it yourself.

It is a sort of dystopia where the whole of Europe is intoxicated with the 'member berries from South Park.

"People who didn’t feel at home in the present time. I suspect that some, if not most of them, did it out of nostalgia for the happiest years of their lives, while others did it out of fear that the world was irrevocably headed downhill and that the future was canceled. A strange anxiety hung in the air, you could catch a whiff of its faint scent when inhaling."

"A person is not built to live in the prison of one body and one time."

Though the communists are also guilty of this feeling, there is something about right-wing or conservationists who always want to go to some imaginary golden past. Though this is very European novel, I know the Indian right-wing too, would like to return to the 'good old days' - only it would be to a time far older.

Apart from the general story mentioned above, there are also many beautiful short stories in it. There is for example, a brief mention of 'Blind Vaysha Syndrome' given in passing - talking about the case of a girl who could see past with one eye and present with the other.

I have dozens of quotes but I will share only one more:

"A person is not built to live in the prison of one body and one time."

makaelafauber's review against another edition

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2.0

The beginning of Time Shelter was phenomenal. I was immediately absorbed by the story and the characters - the idea of a time clinic to help Alzheimer's patients is so interesting! Some reviews mention the confusing layout of the book, but I thought it perfectly reflected the nonlinear nature of memory. I also enjoyed

Spoiler

the narrator's own descent into dementia.

The last 1/2 of the book was tedious though. Perhaps the first half led me to believe the story would be character-driven, but the majority of this book is actually a European history lesson. This is not inherently bad, but in the case of Time Shelter, it reads much like a textbook which is not what I wanted to get out of this story. I had hoped for more focus on the Alzheimer's patients and more insight into memory, which ultimately was not delivered.