Publishers Weekly
Bestselling author Albom (Tuesdays with Morrie) turns his attention to Father Time in his new fabulist page-turner. Long ago—before a word like "ago" had any meaning—a man named Dor began to chart the passage of time, immediately realizing that "all his days were numbered," and so were his wife's. When she falls deathly ill, Dor climbs the Tower of Babel to beg the gods for help. But as a result of his brazenness, he is banished to a cave where he must endure listening to humanity plead for "more hours, more years, more time." After 6,000 years of torment, Dor is finally released back into the modern world with an enchanted hourglass and a mission: to teach two wayward souls the true value of time—Sarah Lemon, a distressed teen, who wishes the end would come quickly, and Victor Delamonte, a prosperous aging businessman trying his best to keep the end at bay. With a clever conceit and frequent shifts in perspective, Albom deftly juggles multiple narratives to craft an inspiring tale that will please his fans and newcomers alike. (Sept.)
SEPTEMBER 2012 - AudioFile
This fable successfully places one foot in the tradition of Aesop and the other in the fast-paced modern sketches that dominate today's bestselling fiction. The latest book by Mitch Albom tackles one of the biggest issues in modern society—how best to spend your time. Narrator Dan Stevens portrays the whimsical characters with equal gravitas and verisimilitude. His leisurely pace and careful enunciation allow the listener's imagination to easily fill in the shading intended by the author. Stevens shifts smoothly between accents, crisp and clean British and the casual American. His inflection is spot-on, and he delivers the evocative and emotional story with aplomb. R.O. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
Treacly fable by pop inspirationalist Albom (Tuesdays with Morrie, 1997, etc.). Dava Sobel and Longitude be damned, God doesn't like people who measure things. Six thousand–odd years ago--is the date a nod to Archbishop Ussher and his proto-creationism?--a fine young fellow named Dor invents the world's first clock and is banished to a cave for the affront, since only the deity is supposed to be concerned with such things, it being the days before hourly wage work and lawyers who bill in 15-minute increments. Dor now sits in a cave, "listening to something. Voices. Endless voices." And what do you suppose those voices want? Yup, time. More of it. Endless time. Or at least a year or two. Writing in his customary staccato ("But Father Time is real. And, in truth, he cannot age."), Albom gives Dor a chance to redeem himself by instructing two hapless earthlings--a man dying of cancer, a teenage girl in danger of dying by her own hand--in the meaning of life. The Little Prince it ain't: Albom seems to have taken the template for his novel from a corporate report, each page studded with boldfaced passages that would seem to signal something momentous; a person in a hurry could well read just those boldfaced passages and emerge with a pretty good idea of the storyline, which is plenty predictable in any event. Still, there are a few useful takeaways, among them these: If you're moribund, a pocket watch will cheer you right up; if you're worried about the prospect of imminent demise, then remember that, as the old dude who cometh from God's side sayeth, immortality "is not a gift." A product less than a book; those with not enough time on their hands might spend what they have more meaningfully elsewhere.
