When I was younger I loved stories such as H.G. Wells' “The Time Machine” which not only imagined a fantastic scenario where a person could travel through different periods of time, but poignantly described how civilisation continuously strives towards utopian ideals (and inevitably fails.) In the novel “Time Shelter” Georgi Gospodinov asserts “There is no time machine except the h uman being.” However, the narrator befriends a mysterious person named Guastine who seemingly inhabits different periods of time simultaneously. The story introduces a scenario where individuals stricken with dementia find comfort in Guastine's clinic which meticulously reproduces environments from the past. As the idea catches on the general public seek refuge in living as if the past were the present. Eventually most of Europe holds referendums to revert to a specific decade from history. Alongside this outlandish tale, the book seriously ponders matters to do with mortality, memory, the nature of reality and the power of nostalgia.
As the narrator gets involved in the clinic and recreating the past, he's struck by certain sensations which inspire a trip down his own memory lane. It was moving how even though these recollections were obviously specific to him I was equally swept into the narrator's longing for the past. I feel like nostalgia is something so many people experienced more intensely during the pandemic since lockdowns meant we weren't allowed to see familiar people and places in real life. During this time I once passed by a fountain near a grocery store and the smell of its chlorinated recycled water evoked strong childhood memories of being taken to Disney World with its elaborate fountains. This resulted in some shameful hours I spent watching POV videos of Disney rides and old park vlogs on YouTube. There's an undeniable power to how certain sensations (especially scents) can instantly transport us to the past. Even if it's not a happy recollection, we can suddenly feel like we're re-experiencing all those emotions from a bygone era with a mixture of memory and the imagination. The novel describes both the pleasures and dangers of harnessing this effect in the lives of individuals and nations.
Guastine's ambition grows from wanting to reproduce different decades on different floors of his clinic to wanting to recreate whole cities from different times. Similarly, as nations engage in public debates about what eras they want to revert back to there are disagreements and issues which make such plans practically impossible. Of course, this is an absurdist story but the value of indulging in such concepts is that it offers a more clearsighted view of the influence that history and nostalgia has upon us. Gospodinov artfully shows how it's easier and more comfortable for people to harken back to the past than look to the future which is unknown. This is something that politicians and marketers are aware of and they use this to manipulate the public. We can easily see evidence in this from political campaigns to commercials. And quite frequently it works. Ironically, we can even feel nostalgia for the ads we were constantly fed in early life: “But what is going on with the ads? The ones we passed over with annoyance back then have now taken on a new value. Suddenly the ads have become the true news about that time. The entrance into it. A memory of everyday life”. These ads from the past have become testaments to the ideals and styles which were fed to us in a particular time period.
In recent years populist leaders have proclaimed that they'll make a country great again and that they want to take a country back. By taking such notions of reverting to past times literally this novel creatively shows how this isn't only a fallacy but a dangerous impossibility. Inequity has always existed so no one would be able to agree what period of time was best in a nation's history. Also, this nostalgia for a purer better era is more about our fantasies of how things used to be rather than the reality of history. Gospodinov states: “The past is not just that which happened to you. Sometimes it is that which you just imagined.” Alongside expressing universal ideas about the function of the past and memory, it feels like this novel is making a timely statement because we can so often be swayed into making decisions about the future based on nostalgia rather than recognizing the reality of the present.
As much as I appreciated the overall message of this novel, there were some elements of the book I struggled with. It has so many interesting ideas to chew over and it really helped me re-frame my understanding of history and the effects of nostalgia. However, I felt it was a bit of a slog getting through this story as I struggled to emotionally connect to it. The nebulous figure of Guastine flits in and out of the novel making statements and providing quotes which sometimes felt too self conscious. Though the narrator gradually reveals elements of his life I never felt like I could fully grasp who he was as a character. He also sometimes goes off on tangents such as a chapter which feels like a one-sided polemic against euthanasia and in another section he seems to dismiss all recent literature: “if nations go back to the '70s and '80s, what will happen to the poetry and books that are not yet written and which are forthcoming? Then I tried to recall what great things I had read from the past few years. I didn't think I would have regrets about any of it.” In my opinion, these sassy simplistic asides detract from the larger meaning of the book. So, while I admire the larger meaning of this novel, the experience of reading it was both enlightening and frustrating.
