I’m not there but I see the big 4-0 on the horizon so when my eye glazed over this book in the library, I was intrigued. I’ve read less of my usual literary fiction (and read less in general this summer) and since I didn’t want anything too heavy, I thought this would be something different.
Three friends who always celebrate their birthdays together are approaching the big 5-0 when they get the chance to relive a different milestone year in their lives, the year they turned forty. I had only skimmed the back cover so when I got to the part where the time travel starts, I thought, “What in the name of Big and Freaky Friday is this?” The ruse used to get them back in time is a little cheesy. Yes, I know time travel is very popular but it isn’t my thing. Still, I‘m glad I stuck with the book anyway.
What made the friends’ 40th year so momentous? Jessie regrets the affair that gave her a wonderful third child but also ended her marriage to a man she never stopped loving. Successful author Gabriela vowed that motherhood was definitely not for her but she wonders if she was wrong. Claire wonders about the one that got away, how she might have parented her daughter better, and wants more time with her mother.
The book has its humorous moments, such as when they wonder how they will live without the cell phone apps that we are so used to today.
Unlike a lot of stories that feature time travel, this one does not allow future dwellers to go back to a static past and change things around for the better. The women’s very presence and their knowledge of what is to come means that they make different choices…and so does everyone else, much to their chagrin. They don’t get to just fix things. And this includes their friendship. That is another thing that made this book different—their bond is real but their friendship isn’t perfect. In a group of three, two of the three are bound to be closer. Instead of offering the kind of best female friends that seem impossibly close, the authors offer a group of friends who have kept secrets from each other and from themselves. One of the rules for the time travel is that all three must decide to go back in time and all three must be in agreement about whether to stay in the alternate past or return to the lives they left.
As one of the women observes, the point wasn’t so much that they could make all their problems disappear but rather that with their knowledge of how things turned out, they could face their challenges in a different way.
