LIT LISTS: Five time travel stories that explore what it means to be human

Friday, July 28, 2023

Five time travel stories that explore what it means to be human

Holly Smale is the author of Geek Girl, Model Misfit, Picture Perfect, and All That Glitters. She was unexpectedly spotted by a top London modeling

agency at the age of fifteen and spent the following two years falling over on catwalks, going bright red and breaking things she couldn’t afford to replace. By the time Smale had graduated from Bristol University with a BA in English Literature and an MA in Shakespeare she had given up modeling and set herself on the path to becoming a writer.

Smale's new novel is Cassandra in Reverse.

At Lit Hub she tagged five of the best time travel stories that explore what it means to be human, including:

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

In this beautiful novel, Kate Atkinson uses a form of time-travel to investigate the fragility of being alive in a warm, luminous and witty way. Ursula is consistently dying and being re-born—with each life repeating until she uses her memories (and often instinct) to send it in slightly different directions and make alternative choices. One of the biggest issues of writing a time travel book is making sure that the repetition isn’t boring for the reader, and this book does that sublimely. Every sentence is so beautifully and clearly observed, and its companion book (A God In Ruins) plays with an off-shoot of the same basic idea: where would we all end up if we got another chance?