Once Again by Catherine Wallace Hope
I would like to thank Anne and Alcove Press for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Publisher – Alcove Press
Published - Out Now
Price - £22.59 Hardcover £7.59 Kindle eBook
What if you had the chance to save someone you lost? Isolated in the aftermath of tragedy, Erin Fullarton has felt barely alive since the loss of her young daughter, Korrie. She tries to mark the milestones her therapist suggests - like this day: the five hundredth - but moving through grief is like swimming against a dark current. Her estranged husband, Zac, a brilliant astrophysicist, seems to be coping better. Lost in his work, he's perfecting his model of a stunning cosmological phenomenon, one he predicts will occur on this same day - an event so rare, it keeps him from being able to acknowledge this milestone alongside Erin. But when Erin receives a phone call from her daughter's school, the same call she received five hundred days earlier when Korrie was still alive, Erin realises something is happening. Or happening again. Struggling to understand the sudden shifts in time, she pieces together that the phenomenon Zac is tracking may have presented her with the gift of a lifetime: the chance to save her daughter. As Erin is swept through time, she's unable to reach Zac or convince the authorities of what is happening. Forced to find the answer on her own, Erin must battle to keep the past from repeating - or risk losing her daughter for good.
I think all of us would love the opportunity to do this year differently. Time can be a cruel monster and yet we all wonder if it’s possible to embrace our inner Cher and turn time back. Media such as Back to the Future or Quantum Leap make us think there may be another way. I was therefore really impressed by Catherine Wallace Hope’s short science fiction thriller Once Again that gives us a deliciously emotionally powerful tale using time travel to right a wrong.
In 2021 we meet Erin a lost soul trying to get through each long day as she lies lost in a dreadful cycle of grief and despair ever since she lost her six-year-old daughter Korrie tragically in 2020. That event has led to Erin becoming ever isolated from friends and family including her husband Zac. Five hundred days have passed, and Erin doesn’t want to leave the house while Zac goes to watch a rare event in the lab he works at where he will witness black holes collide. A few hours later and Erin finds herself briefly in the past on the day her daughter was last seen alive…then she zaps back. Slowly she realises she either may be able to stop this nightmare or else she really is losing her last grip on reality.
What really hit me when reading this is the emotional power of Hope’s writing. There is a strong sense of grief in the 2021 version of Erin and Zac two very lost souls. One cutting herself off from the world and one burying themselves into their work. I found this a really well constructed opening because you need to be invested in both characters and also it helps you just possibly doubt what Erin sees and hears as well as really investing you in hoping this can be fixed. I also liked the wider consequences of Korrie’s death billowing out from family to even the police that got involved. Crimes leave imprints across a society that can haunt people years afterwards. As the story progresses and we see what happened to Korrie we see a darker story emerge and the story starts to also show us the perpetrator’s worldview which is chillingly delivered. These characters were the hooks of the story and you get very invested in seeing where they go, and can they be changed from what we know they all look like in 2021. The characters pain and they way they battle through it I think really powers the story
The science fiction is a typical McGuffin. I really liked how Hope plays with space time and the rationale for Erin’s involvement but it is not something that I suspect many physicists will want to explore closely. However for me the key of the story is this is a device to help time travel be possible and I’m always more interested in the consequences of science fictional devices on the world rather than the nuts and bolts of the time travel being explained in algebra. I think it’s well posited but I do think the final chapters slightly overdo the attempt to balance everything up and leaves things a little clunkily resolved but for me this was very much the joy of the ride and not the final destination.
The thriller elements are the most effective and Hope plays some very effective effects to show the weirder side of time travel. We can have cars chase through summer days, snowstorms and fires, characters shift and vanish, and our villain drives ever closer to Korrie while the clock ticks down in 2020 and 2021. Knowing the stakes if Erin gets this wrong mean the reader gets sucked into every little event that pushes Erin closer or further away from success. It has a great filmic quality to it and at no point did I feel it have outstayed its welcome.
This was a story that for me reminds me that science fiction can be delivered with heart and sometimes we just want a happy ending. If you enjoyed watching Doctor Beckett leap through the years and save lives as well as a very smart thriller then this is a story you should definitely enjoy.
