The Time Keeper

It’s totally awesome book tuesday! Today I give you “The Time Keeper” by Mitch Albom, an author also known for his books “Tuesdays with Morrie” and “The Five People You Meet in Heaven.”

Here’s the synopsis:

Banished to this cave, he must listen to the world’s every plea–for more minutes, more hours, more years, more time.

He has been here an eternity. He has given up hope. But a clock ticks for all of us, silently, somewhere.

Soon Father Time will be free. To return to Earth. And finish what he started.

Let me go more in depth for you.

So, let me first start with this: it’s a very short book. I read it in three hours! So you’ll definitely have time to spare for this one. (get it? time? okay)

The novel mainly surrounds itself with three main characters: Dor (Father Time), Victor, and Sarah. Albom sends us back in time (again with the time) with the first moment time was discovered. Father Time was the man to do so. For doing so, he is punished by God for it. I won’t explain why he was punished for discovering time, since I’ll let you figure that out yourself.

Dor is told that he must find someone wanting more time, and someone wanting less. That’s when he picks out Sarah and Victor.

We follow Dor’s, Sarah’s, and Victor’s story all at the same instance. I must make a point that this book is actually pretty cleverly structured. The chapters are short, but in them, there are bold sentences in between each paragraph, in order to start a new one. I really liked this unique structure because it emphasized a new point or a new step in the book easier, and it also made the read that much faster and enjoyable. Just open up the pages to know what I’m talking about 🙂 I love cleverly structured books!

Anyway, this book also has a lot of really deep quotes. Really deep. I was only 17 pages in, and I kept having these moments of epiphany. Although this book is short, it really makes you reflect on things. It gets down deep to the core.

I especially like how Father Time has a past of his own, a three dimensional character that even the reader can relate to. It’s like…I actually feel bad he invented time. After reading this, and whenever I look at a clock, I kind of sneer a bit. Why can’t we just live in moments? Why can’t we treasure it all?

So, I give you some quotes to have a better feel of the book.

“Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.”

“It is never too late or too soon. It is when it is supposed to be.”

“We all yearn for what we have lost. But sometimes, we forget what we have.”

“Sometimes, when you are not getting the love you want, giving makes you think you will.”

“When you are measuring life, you are not living it.”

“There is a reason why God limits our days.” “Why?” “To make each one precious.”

“When we are most alone is when we embrace another’s loneliness.”

“Ends are for yesterday, not tomorrows.”

“As mankind grew obsessed with its hours, the sorrow of lost time became a permanent hole in the human heart. People fretted over missed chances, over inefficient days; they worried constantly about how long they would live, because counting life’s moments had led, inevitably, to counting them down. Soon, in every nation and in every language, time became the most precious commodity.”

“Soon man will count all his days, and then smaller segments of the day, and then smaller still—until the counting consumes him, and the wonder of the world he has been given is lost.”

So go on and pick the book up! It’s a fast read, and it really makes you think. It’s the kind of book that’s really stay with you.

High chance it’ll make you look at time in a new respect.

Keep on reading!

-S. K. Robitaille