The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas

In the first chapter of The Psychology of Time Travel, we’re introduced to “four young scientists” (Margaret, Lucille, Grace, and Barbara) who have been working in an isolated laboratory and who manage, in 1967, to build a working time machine. The technology can’t take people back to any point prior to its own invention, but time travelers from the future can go back as far as 1967, and time travelers from 1967 can travel into the future (though only 300 years into the future, for reasons that are not fully explained). In the second chapter, which is set in 2017, we meet Ruby, a psychologist who happens to be Barbara’s granddaughter. (Barbara, we learn in the first chapter, had an episode of what was then called “manic depression” after her first forays into the future, and was forced out of the lab as a result.) And then in chapter three we meet Odette, who (in January 2018) discover’s a woman’s body in the basement of the toy museum where she’s just started volunteering. The book takes up the mystery of who the woman is and how she died, with chapters jumping around in time and focus: some chapters are about Margaret and Lucille and Grace and Barbara; others focus on Ruby or Odette; still others focus on other time travelers, or people who are relatives of other time travelers. (Time travel, we learn, is governed by the Time Travel Conclave, an organization that Margaret founded and that she still directs as of 2017—Lucille and Grace still work at the Conclave as well.)

I like how fast-paced the story is, and how the different timelines and plot threads all come together. Early in the book, Barbara (or Bee, as she’s often called) gets a note from the future, which turns out to be a “notice of an inquest” for “the death of a woman in her eighties.” Ruby worries that the dead woman is Bee herself, and wants to figure out the mystery of the death so she can prevent it, if so. Bee, meanwhile, just wants to see if she can time travel again. And Odette, who finds the body, has her own reasons for wanting to solve the mystery. This isn’t just a mystery story, though: it’s a time travel story with a bit of queer romance, and it’s a whole lot of fun. I picked this up for LGBTQ book club at work and am glad I did—and it’s reminded me that I should really also read The Box of Delights (which I first heard mentioned in Fire and Hemlock).