Hazards of Time Travel
Author: Joyce Carol Oates
Living in NAS – the North American States, a dystopian future version of the US – is not pretty. Everything you do, everything you say is monitored and if the authorities consider it a threat to the way things are… the consequences can be catastrophic.
Adriane Strohl is the smartest girl in her class. But when she delivers the valedictorian speech at her graduation ceremony she raises too many questions. She is immediately arrested. Her punishment? She is sent eighty years back in time as an exile to Wainscotia, Wisconsin. The rules? She is to accept a new identity, never speak about where she came from, not to establish any true relationships with anyone and not to reveal anything about the future.
Cut off from everything and everyone she has ever know, how will Adriane Strohl survive in this new and alien reality? But is she truly alone? In Wainscotia she finds a fellow exile and they fall in love. Together they start questioning the rules of their confinement. But how far are they really willing to go to test them?
Hazards of Time Travel is yet more proof of the versatility and imagination of Joyce Carol Oates. The novel, in the current state of political affairs, is timely and relevant and raises powerful questions. The narrative is fast-paced and incredibly introspective, deeply analysing what it means for Adriane to be cast adrift. Aside from its dystopian and political facets, Hazards of Time Travel is also about love and human’s need to find connection and kinship.
Very entertaining and thought-provoking!
> Naomi Round
