TIME’S JOURNEY
A death bed confession, some black and white photographs, a disgraced politician living in retirement and the young woman who befriends him after a casual conversation in a pub. Disparate, seemingly unconnected threads which in the gifted hands of Jane Davis, are beautifully woven into a complex, captivating novel.
I Stopped Time is a story spanning two centuries (the twentieth and twenty first), told largely through its heroine Lottie Pye. Growing up in turn of the century Brighton, Lottie’s life is transformed when she walks into a photographic studio and is instantly hooked by the magical images conjured up from behind the velvet screens and camera lenses. Photography is the medium that will shape her destiny taking her into a journey of self-discovery, creative brilliance, and a disastrous marriage! There will be fulfilment, but it will come at a cost! When Lottie walks out on her marriage her charismatic ex-husband is left to raise their son James, who grows up believing his mother had callously abandoned him. It is only when Lottie dies at the ripe old age of 108 and leaves her photographic collection to her son, that he finally discovers the truth. With the help of Jenni, the young student struggling to come to terms with the recent death of her mother, James confronts his past and through Lottie’s pictures grows to realise that she had never stopped loving him.
I Stopped Time is a rich, multi layered story with a steady narrative pace and where the shift from one century to the next is faultless. The writing has a deceptively simple quality, punctuated with images of striking, poetic depth. How’s this for a description of birds flying across the skies above Brighton pier?
“The heavens appeared to change their hue as a swirling shoal cart-wheeled over the wreckage, fluid and ghost like in motion, turning the sunset from rose pink to black to shades of grey.”
The characters are wonderfully realistic, and it really is impossible not to feel for them as they battle against life’s setbacks in their search for happiness. Davis extends the realism to the novel’s minor players, using their very ordinariness to enhance the power of a strong narrative. We empathise with the angry mother mourning the deaths of her three sons, while sharing Lottie’s consternation at the indifference of bathers on Brighton beach in 1914 when a newspaper boy announces that Britain is at war. The men lazily sit back in deck chairs “with trousers rolled up to their knees” while the women shade their faces with “large hats and parasols,” oblivious to the enormity of the news. Lottie’s dismay is equally palpable when she recalls the event nearly a century later.
I Stopped Time is a poignant, intricately structured novel whose themes of love, friendship, and understanding will resonate with anyone who reads it. Davis is an extremely talented writer who takes simple human themes and works them into a splendidly crafted literary magic.
Reviewed by Juliette Foster
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