Welcome friend! Today I have another novella review and recommendation for you. N Joseph Glass told me about Overlap: The Lives of a Former Time Jumper back in November and when I was designing the backlist bingo, I knew it was one of the first books I was going to pick up. I love reading time travel and related stories and based on the synopsis this one sounded like a unique take on the subject matter. Here is what it is about:

Overlap: The Lives of a Former Time Jumper – Book Review

Overlap has a sharp beginning. Moments full of panic and desperation as Marcus and his wife, Ellie, are involved in a mugging incident gone horribly wrong. Her death drives Marcus to build the machine for time travel, or specifically time jumping. In the present, many years have passed since. Marcus is a recluse, living far away from society, with minimum human contact. Something about a reporter named Jessica Matthews catches his eye and for the first time ever, he decides to accept her request for an interview. Her resemblance to his wife is giving him new feelings. He has missed being around her. 

Jessica and the history of Vacations in Time

Jessica is smart and intelligent. She has been diligent in her research about him, his invention, his business endeavors and the life he leads since his commercial time jumping business, Vacations in Time, shut down. The first part of the book dives into Marcus’ deepest darkest secrets that he is willing to lay bare in front of Jessica – the illegal experiments he did to test his technology, the success he found, how he let it be used for profit even though he himself only wanted to keep going back in time and building new lives with Ellie. He talks about the business model, all the skeletons that his business partner buried by throwing money at them and the number of times he saw his invention used for inhuman deeds. All this has taken a toll on him and this story is heavy with regret and guilt. But at its core is sorrow and grief. All Marcus wanted was to be with his wife, the one person in the world who understood him, and his time travelling could only make that possible for short periods of time.

There were moments in the book when I was creeped out. Marcus uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to keep an eye on Jesscia. He plans to extend her visit as much as he can and even the guest room she sleeps in has Ellie’s clothes. There are many times throughout the book when he assures the reader that he has no bad intentions towards Jessica but it is hard to not feel uncomfortable with his narrative in the beginning. 

Exploring the Concept of Time Jumping through Marcus

I enjoyed the concept of time jumping in this book. A person could go back to a moment in time that they had already lived. They could live it again, change the outcome, should they want, but the traveler would always return to their present and the past would be unchanged there. 

Marcus experimented with his machine extensively and jumped many times for different motivations. Through the book, I pondered the effects of time jumping on the traveler, the question of what is reality and what is a dream. Having jumped so many times, sometimes when real events are too overwhelming to process, Marcus has a hard time keeping his grip on reality, “There is no tank. This is real”. It was heartbreaking to imagine the good times he was living with the constant knowledge that his time would be up and his connection to his jumped-to reality would sever. He would again be returned to the world where is the inventor of time travel but also alone, without Ellie.

Marcus is filled with the beautiful memories he built in his time jumping and his mind is heavy with sorrow of all that he has lost in his quest to live more. Through Marcus, and later Jessica’s insights, Overlap effectively uses the concept of time jumping to explore themes of love, regret, and loss. Jessica asks insightful and thought-provoking questions that I had as a reader as well and as Marcus concludes the events of how Vacations in Time shut down, she reveals her true connection to him. I enjoyed their conversation even more after this and the second half of the book gave another glimpse of Marcus, in a life that he had when he was a jumper, leading to why he stopped jumping. 

When I first started reading this book, I didn’t get the impression that Marcus would have been a family man. He has lived by himself for decades and it’s clearly established early on in Marcus and Jessica’s conversation that he doesn’t keep any friends. The important people in Marcus’ life are either dead or he knew them only in the course of his time jumping. He misses them deeply and I liked learning the familial and loving side of him beyond him in the second half of the book.

The World Building

There are mentions of current events to ground the reader on a common understanding of the 2020s though they have been long past and the world is decades ahead and different from our present today. There are mentions of AI technology and advancements as well as thoughtful details are added to effects of jumping on the human body and mental health. Marcus is an isolationist and the outside world matters very little in this story. While I may have been interested in this future where jumping to another time existed and then didn’t anymore, I was so engrossed in Marcus and Jessica that I did not waver from their story.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a great story that I was hooked on from the start to the end. It is perfect as a novella! The writing is concise and N. Joseph Glass masterfully balances the elements of suspense and emotional depth.

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Many thanks to the author for a review copy of the book.

If you are a fan of The Time Machine by H G Wells, Dark Matter by Blake Crouch (Goodreads), The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas (Goodreads, review), Tell Me An Ending by Jo Harkin (Goodreads, review) and/or the Travellers TV show (IMDB), I am sure you will enjoy this perspective. Very well done!