Customer Reviews

A Shortcut in Time

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

There are basically two kinds of time travel stories. There's the Sprague DeCamp/Robert Silverberg kind of story, full of large, historymaking events, and the Time Patrol to protect the continuum, and knowledgeable time travelers making things happen. And there's the Jack Finney kind of story, about ordinary people dealing with small-scale events in out-of-the-way towns and trying hard simply to cope with things that happen to them willy-nilly. Dickinson has written a warm, funny, affecting example of the second kind of story. Josh Winkler is a somewhat feckless artist living in Euclid Heights, Illinois, where crosswise shortcut paths known as "perp walks" disturb the town's gridded layout. He's married to a doctor, the sister of his brother Kurt's best friend when they were kids, before her brother drowned in the town pool and Kurt suffered permanent brain damage. Their fifteen-year-old daughter, Penny -- the best-drawn character in the book, I think -- is about all that's still keeping them together. Then Josh gets caught riding his bike in a storm on one of the perp walks and is tossed fifteen minutes into the past. But young Constance, who appears soon after, has a worse time of it, dragged into our own era from 1908. Can she get back? Can she adapt to our world? And what happens if someone else becomes an unintentional time traveler? Dickinson's style is quiet and thoughtful; he almost lets the story tell itself. An excellent piece of work.

One of the reviews on the back cover compares this book to the time travel stories of Jack Finney. As I started reading this, I wasn't sure what that meant, but as the story progressed, it definitely developed an atmosphere that was very similar to Finney's style. However, this is a very different story, one that is much less upbeat in its consequences. The narrator, Josh Winkler, is an accidental time traveller, and while his actions in the past have an impact on the present, the changes he brings about don't necessarily make life easier or happier. While time travel is the hook in this story, it really seems to be more about the choices we make and their often unanticipated ramifications. The story opens with a tragic incident early in Josh's life, and ends with a number of unresolved questions lingering. The story doesn't come together in a neat package, tied together with a pretty ribbon at the end, which perhaps makes it all the more compelling.

This book started very well. It had me interested, curious, thinking ahead. Good signs for a book. But then some holes start to appear and they slowly get bigger and bigger. And then after 287 pages it just ends on page 288. How did this get past the editors? Was this a joke by the publisher? "Hey lets see how many people will buy a incomplete book?"

The story was very interesting until he gets back to his "second time around" life. There are lots of hints leading you to think there is more to it. But nothing leads anywhere and all of a sudden it is over. What about the brother? How can there be a daughter if there was never a union with the mother? Time travel flaw!!

I just can't get past how angry I am about the way this just fizzled out! I don't understand how others can give it a good review. It started strong and just FIZZLED and then THUD!!!!

I am P#$$ed Off!

The author definitely had some fun with the concept of time travel and created a fast-paced and entertaining story, which didn't get bogged down in concerns over the intracacies of time travel and its paradoxes or explanations as to how the the characters were able to skip so freely through time. However, I agree with many of the other reviewers that the ending was absolutely inexcusable. I've never encountered such a sudden and abrupt ending. I had to track down another copy of the book to ensure that I wasn't just missing pages. I can only assume that the author simply fell through a time hole himself and wasn't around the finish the book. The characters are left hanging without any resolution or explanation. While I appreciate that not every story has a happy ending, at a minimum, I expected an ending of some sort. Readers of this book will definitely feel cheated at the "conclusion".

Josh Winkler lives a good life. He has a 15 year old daughter Penny. His wife is a doctor which gives him the time to dabble with his art. His younger brother was injured when he was young and now is brain damaged. He wanders the streets of Euclid Heights, IL, in most ways, a bum. Oneday a teenage girl appears, barefoot, seemingly out of nowhere, wondering "what happened to Dash?" While treading the "perp walks" (perpendicular paths cut between steets) of Euclid Heights, during a burgeoning storm, Josh Winkler slips back in time 15 minutes. The two occurences are no coincidence. Josh tries to convince his family that he went back 15 minutes. His daughter tells her friends that her father went back 15 minutes. Soon, his wife's practice is suffering and Josh is a town joke. All the neighborhood kids are out on the perp walks trying to make themselves go back in time. The young girl that Josh saw that day soon shows up at his wife's practice as a ward of the state and claims to be from the year 1908. Over the next couple of weeks, the time traveling girl -- Constance Morceau -- befriends Josh's family as well as seeks to learn about her own future through old microfilm reels at the local library...a practice which Josh discourages. She is desperately trying to get back to 1908, not only because she misses her family, but also because the young man with whom she was with -- Dash -- is lynched in connection with her disappearance.

This is the first work of Mr. Dickinson's I have read and I have to admit, that while it wasn't the best piece of time travel fiction I have I ever read, it certainly was an enjoyable read...especially after the rather long slow start. The reviews at the beginning of the book compared this it to some of Jack Finney's work. I would definitely have to agree. Like Finney's stories, Dickinson doesn't try to make time travel the focus of this book, instead it is about the lives of the characters (artist, doctor, etc.) and how this incredible event -- time travelling -- effects them...mostly in undesired ways. Overall, I would definitely read more of Mr. Dickinson's works...and I have already recommended this one to several people.

I am really intrigued by this concept, and I must say that after the midpoint of the book, I was taking longer lunch breaks just to finish it.

But.

The first half really dragged for having such an interesting idea, they never REALLY explain how they are sometimes able to directly influence what time they end up in, and it just seemed like a lot of slogging.

Worse still, the ending is both disappointingly grim AND decidedly abrupt. I kept thinking that perhaps some pages were missing from the book becuase it just ended.

I wanted to like this book. I know the suburbs he talks about and lives in, and I enjoy a good time travel book. But the ending was inexcusable. I've never been more upset after finishing a novel.

Based on the reviews I read here in Amazon, I decided to check this book out of the library. I liked it quite a bit while I was reading it and even recommended it to my sister. We both happened to finish the book on the same day and spoke on the phone that night. It seems we had the exact same reaction when it came to the last page: "Is that it?!!??'.
It was SUCH an unsatisfying ending (the worse I've ever come across) that I even checked to make sure no pages were torn from the book.
I gave it two stars instead of one because I didn't hate the book, just the very last page.
One I'd recommend strongly is Jack Finney's book Time and Again. I started on that after A Shortcut in Time. It's a fiction novel but includes drawings of late 1800 New York City done by the main character in the book.

It took me three months to read Time and Again by Jack Finney, which I liked but it was a long haul. A Shortcut in Time cranked at record speed. I read it in two days - could not put it down! I'm a huge fan of time travel books with The Mirror and The Time Traveler's Wife as two of my favorites. A Shortcut in Time has quickly been added to my favorites list. What a great find. What a great read. Extremely well written. I loved this book!

I just finished this book, and like other reviewers, am bewildered by the ending. I guess the author had a deadline, and just sent them what he had...RIGHT NOW? I dunno.

You have the protagonist, Josh, married with a daughter. He travels through time, just a 15 minute blip into the past, and then when his daughter Penny goes missing, he finds through microfilm in the library that she disappeared further into the past, 1918, and died of Spanish Influenza. He goes back to 1918 to find her and learns that Penny doesn't want to return to the present. When he returns to the present himself, he finds he changed history somehow, and that his life is totally different. So here is where the story might have gotten good - really interesting.

But this is where all plot development goes away. The author sets the scene, then doesn't take it anywhere except to an abrupt ending that -- (see how it feels?)

I feel that this book had some deeper things going on, rather than the "what happen to the time travellers?"

This book is about shortcuts. The town is full of shortcuts, both built into the town, and the people. Everybody wants things to go right for them in the easiest way possible.

But we learn there are no shortcuts. If Josh wants to succeed, he needs to participate in his life. Flo judged her success by popularity. Penny wanted to be a grown-up faster.

But none of these shortcuts really work. And the shortcuts in time don't take anyone to where they want to go.

As far as Time-travel adventures, I've read much better. There are paradoxes {(doxii?), loopholes, confusing mechanics, etc. But as far as stories about people and their lives, and what choices they make? It's pretty good.