The Time Keeper (Mitch Albom)

Mitch Albom (the author of Tuesdays with Morrie), brings you The Time Keeper, a novel about how precious our time is on Earth. 

The story starts with Dor, a man who, thousands of years ago, is inventing the concept of time.  He's counting drops of water, watching shadows, figuring out the moon.  He, Father Time, is punished for having created time and is required, for thousands of years, to listen to everyone's wishes for time.  Finally the day comes when he is given an hourglass and a task to teach two people what time really means. 

Dor's story is combined with the stories of Sarah - a teenage girl who thinks she has had as much as she can handle - and Victor - a man who has a terminal illness.  Both of these people are, in some way, trying to change the "time" they have been given on Earth. 

"What you have done to this point cannot be undone.  What you do next... [...] It is still unwritten."  (p. 180)

This book was very easy to read.  The chapters are short, so it's very easy to keep telling yourself, "Just one more chapter..." 

For me, it was the stories of Sarah and Victor that kept me interested.  I found the concept of the novel a little strange.  I enjoyed the references to time, and I thought that the novel had a good message, but at times it seemed a little 'unreal' for me.  (I know, I AM the girl who will read stories like The Night Circus or Harry Potter and love them, even though they aren't "real," but this novel just seemed a little different...)

I can't put my finger on my feelings for this book, but I will say... It wasn't my favourite novel of 2012, but I did like the overall message of the book.  If you can read the next quotation and feel intrigued, you may be interested in The Time Keeper.

"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."  (p. 8)