Rowan Tree and Red Thread

Sam and I read this novel recently. As is often the case, Sam read it first and then spent days encouraging me to read it too, so we could discuss it. I wonder if we shouldn't buy two copies of some books. The groaning shelves shout a mute answer to that idea.

A mainstream "literary fiction" novel telling the love story of an unconsciously time travelling man and his wife, a girl he's known from his travelling since she was six, but won't meet until after they're together for several years. Sad and joyous in turns, it's a lovely, well-written, first novel with some absolutely perfect scenes. Oddly formulaic in places, as the emotional tugging of their attempts at parenthood are gone through, and curiously unlike a lot of genre SF attempts at descriptions of time travel. The paradoxes and the mechanics are glossed over. I felt that the time travel was sometimes nothing more than a handy mechanism to focus on separation, fear of loss, and how people love one another over distance and time. None the worse for that, and I'll watch for other books by the author.