MAR - Somewhere In Time

March review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2016: Somewhere In Time by Richard Matheson, 1980. [Paranormal Romance category]

Warning: This book is fuuuuuull of angst. Such angst. And I read it while I was going through some pretty heavy angst of my own, so I will most likely keep this post relatively short for fear of inundating you all with my feels.

So, the basics. Somewhere In Time is a story about Richard Collier, presented as his manuscript which was published posthumously by his brother, detailing his account of the last days of his life, wherein he falls in love with an actress popular at the turn of the last century, and subsequently traveled back in time to be with the love of his life, said actress Elise McKenna. It is a story of violent and unquestioning love and yearning, of the possibility of a love that can stretch across and shape time with its very forcefulness.

One interesting thing to note is the use of the frame story, of Richard Collier's brother publishing his manuscript. There is a foreword inserted, assuring the reader that this is almost exactly what Richard's manuscript was, although he has edited it in some spaces--and this editing comes through later. The brother's voice butts in, especially during the mantra section, where Richard describes his attempts to lull himself back to 1896 through repetitive writing/thought. For this beginning portion, and again at the end of the text, we are constantly reminded that this is most likely a delusion, and this engenders a certain skepticism in the reading--at least it did in me.

It is relatively self-aware, and/or postmodern, for example Richard addressing the way he is taking things down (through recorded dictation, hand-writing, etc). The writing of the text is part of the text itself. This lends itself to the idea that a love story is about the experience, the journey, the "how" rather than the happily ever after.

Themes of love and belief and death are all intertwined here, and messily. There is a rationalization of everything at the end, when his brother describes what probably happened rather than Richard actually traveling back through time. How is this rationalization supposed to make us feel about the story that came before? I was unsure what I believed about Richard Collier and his fantastic love story, whether the skeptic in me would beat out the hopeless romantic, and this uncertainty left me feeling rather unsatisfied at the end. After all, aren't love stories supposed to end with some degree of "happily ever after"? I have recently been trying to remember the phrase "everything will be ok in the end, and if it isn't, you're not to the end yet," and that sort of struck a chord with me in terms of how this book is sitting. I don't have any answers to any of this, granted, but I'd like to believe his story, in the end.