Time travel novels come in various forms from sci-fi, mystery and even romance. The Summer of Impossible Things is a little bit of all of these. It has been described as the new Time Travellers Wife, but I think the comparison is off. Rowan Coleman has written a novel more in the tradition of Jack Finney or Richard Matheson. Here, there are no time machines to transport protagonist Luna back to 1977 New York at the height of Summer of Sam. Its emotional connections with her surroundings and a will to change the past that transport her.
Much like Finney’s Time and Again, Luna and her younger sister Pea take digs in a New York boarding house. The point of their journey is to oversee the sale of their recently deceased mother’s share of her old family business. As a jumping board, this all seems innocuous. However, when we discover the time was when they had just wrapped filming Saturday Night Fever, a film their dad was a set photographer for, things start to get a bit more interesting.
Coleman has been meticulous in her research of the Bay Ridge area that adds a real sparkle to the time travel set pieces. Thankfully, unlike Finney, Coleman hits just the right balance of research on the page and not an encyclopaedic account of the geography of the past.
This realisation of a town a place makes the mystery aspect of the story seem believable. When Luna and her sister find a series of numbered Super 8 films that have been delivered by the dead mother they start to untangle a life of maternal depression and eventual suicide.
The pacing is well drawn out with a chase to solve the mystery, the romance of meeting a lover in the past dealt with in a mature way without the sometimes schmaltz of Matheson in Bid Time Farewell.
Overall, it’s a novel that covers several genres in almost impeccable balance. The ending did read a little too rushed and the reveal, though somewhat telegraphed, still felt predictable. However, these are minor distractions from an overall great read. Whatever airport you land in for your holidays this summer, take a copy of The Summer of Impossible Things and travel even further in time.
THE SUMMER OF IMPOSSIBLE THINGS / AUTHOR: ROWAN COLEMAN / PUBLISHER: EBURY PRESS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
