Time Shelter - Georgi Gospodinov

 ( Booker International Award 2023)

A healthy - or is it really unhealthy ?- mix of living in the past, being made to live in the past, and having no option but  to live in the past, comes out collectively as an interesting novel. This narration starts off as a measure of compassion and caring, as those with Alzheimer's are offered a place to belong as their lights dim down, as they creep further and further into the caves of their yester  years.

"...for us the past is the past, and even when we step into it, we know that the exit to the present is open, we can come back with ease. For those who have lost their memories, this door has slammed shut once and for all. For them, the present is a foreign country, while the past is their homeland. The only thing we can do is create a space that is in sync with their internal time."

"I don't know how therapeutic that is, who knows whether it will help regenerate neural synapses. But it gives happiness, to a memory of happiness, to be more precise. We assume that the memory of happiness is a happy memory, but who knows?"

Ambitious as its plot may sound, reading little anecdotes from this reminiscence therapy, or insights that startle you -giving you those "wow, there's a thought" moments, that  spread across the first part, was  quite a treat. To me this was the best part of the novel. Some parts, like the one on Euthanasia is quite amazing - for it suggests the careful treading of the language across an interpretation, but still manages to - almost - trip itself.

“Euthanasia is a death caused for the benefit of the person whose death is being caused.” Now, there’s the awkwardness of language, which must justify the act and so it spasms, twists, biting its own tail in the end. I’m killing you for your own good, you’ll see (how could you not?) that it’ll be better for you and the pain will be gone."

But come the second part of the novel, it takes a twist, which I as a reader found a little irksome to read. It was when the nostalgia for a nation's purported best periods of their recent past. Clearly it was influenced by Brexit, where the majority of Britain's aging population wanted their Britishness back. It was also the time of one Mr. Donald Trump, as the populism of 2016 saw him becoming the president of the USA. The part about the referendums held by each nation to select which period they should go back to was interesting, and a student of recent European history is sure to find more to enjoy here.

The book winds up, with the lights becoming dimmer and dimmer for our narrator, and his main character.. or was it himself ?

In summary it is a different book. It attempts to be multiple things. About our pasts, why we can't leave them, why countries find it difficult to leave them, and why harping on their past is more damaging to countries than for individuals. The structure of the novel, the experimental narration that it attempts is quite awe inspiring. It may not be at its most readable across the book, for any given reader, for it treads across a vast area, plus the jumps are big - but I for one believe that a reader who wants to discover new terrain through her reading, should persevere through the delightful, and the not so delightful, and the challenging ( e.g. why I keep telling myself that I must reattempt Moby disk and Ulysses one if there days).

The persevering, and the patient reader will reap rewards for sticking with this book to its completion.

Rating: ****
Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel