A review by chelseamartinez
A Time Outside This Time by Amitava Kumar

3.0

I appreciate the approach and motive of this book: a (fictional?) account of a writer at a retreat/on fellowship as the pandemic starts to happen, already embarking on a quest to "document facts" as a political statement against Trump. The main thing that got really old is the protagonist's complete reliance on his wife as a "scientific foil" with which to interrogate what facts are; Trump lies, but scientists can't counter him, only my art. The wife character is used to introduce all the "science" but it's completely limited to psychology, as if no other types of science exist (and it takes up a HUGE portion of the book)??