Time After Time [Paperback]

Allen Appel (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Alex Balfour teaches history at the New School, is a superb cookand discovers he has the capacity to hurtle through time and space, back to the Russian Revolution. He hangs around only long enough to witness the drowning of Rasputin, after which he treks home to his girl friend Molly, wearing the monk's sables. He's pretty fagged, but in his great-hearted concern for the proper course of events, fades once more into the Russian maelstrom, this time to face imprisonment and, unexpectedly, his father, whose unaccountable absences when Alex was a child 40 years earlier are now clarifed. Like father, like son. The senior Balfour, also a historian, says that Alex must prevent the assassination of Czar Nicholas and his family, but Alex, sick of the whole Red and White imbroglio, sneaks back to the present. Nagged, however, by responsibility to himself and for posterity, he makes a third trip to the past. Readers who can willingly suspend disbelief and endure rather undistinguished prose will be rewarded by scenes of cliff-hanging and head-bashing, slaughter, torture and hairsbreadth escapes, all yeasted up by true romance and wholesome sex. In short, this first novel by photographer Appel succeeds as entertainment, if not as literature. 12,500 first printing; major ad/promo; paperback rights to Dell. November 11
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 372 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub (October 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 088184182X
• ISBN-13: 978-0881841824
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,394,860 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fast-paced sf romantic adventure in Jack Finney tradition, October 6, 1995

By A Customer

This review is from: Time After Time (Paperback)

Librarians loved this recreation of Revolutionary Russia.First in the "Alex Balfour series" about time-travelinghistory professor Balfour who travels from 1985 NYC to 1918 Russia. Nicholas Profitt (GARDENS OF STONE) wrote, "An adventure yarn, a love story, a history lesson, a morality play...Don't be surprised if you devour the whole thing in a single gluttonous binge." Others in the series: TWICE UPON A TIME (Mark Twain, Custer) and TILL THE END OF TIME (WWII from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima, with Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, JFK, Betty Grable, Phil Silvers, others).

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly Excellent, December 27, 2007

By 

J. Perkins (Connecticut) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Time After Time (Mass Market Paperback)

I'm a time travel, historical fiction freak. So I key word searched my library catalogue, and that's how I ended up with this one. I love England and Italy; I don't love Russia. But this one was hard to put down.

Alex is a history professor whose area of expertise is Russian history. He's experienced odd dreams that seem to place him in Russia during the time of the Revolution, and these dreams have begun to morph into actually taking him back there, first landing in a trench during the war and returning with grass stains and mud on the knees of his jeans.

A previous girlfriend, a journalist, returns, wanting to connect with him about some much heralded and speculative information having to do with the revolution that suggests something other than accepted history is what happens.

Their love rekindled (she'd wanted to marry earlier, but left because he was unable to commit), she provides the anchor that pulls him back to the present each time, though both are unaware of the necessity of that until he meets his father on one of his travels to the path and is enlightened on how the process works.

Which is why his father is stuck there. His wife was killed in a plane crash, and as these travels simply happen, rather than being willed, his father was unable to return. In the process, Alex is forced to face his unhappy childhood and hatred for his father.

His trips last longer and longer. He becomes involved in the history, wondering if he's unwittinly altering it or creating it. He's hunted by the government, thrown in prison for a time. He's on the run from the powers that be and from his father who, a despot in the current regime, is out to specifically change the flow of events and attempting to force Alex into aiding him.

Rasputin, Lenin, Nicholas and Alexandra, and others all make appearances. I have no idea if it's historically accurate, but others who know say it is, and that adds to its appeal for me, though I didn't know it was when I read it. I'm so pleased to find there are others, equally as good, by the same author.

This book holds your attention. It was difficult to put down. It is the only book I've ever read that has Russia as part of its plot. I haven't seen Doctor Zhivago, I haven't read any of Doestyvsky's novels, and I don't care about them, either. So that I read this one voraciously is an indication, to me anyway, of how well Allen bridges the two worlds.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this book!, February 8, 2011

By 

lionellovesjulie - See all my reviews

This review is from: Time After Time (Mass Market Paperback)

I read all types of books and this one had been sitting on my shelf for sometime. i picked it up on a friday and was done with it by monday evening.

i was hooked and didn't want to do anything, but read!

i am glad to give it another great review! if you like time travel, and history this is for you!