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A review by expendablemudge
The Map of Moments by Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon
3.0
Okay. Here's the deal: You get to go back in time to fix the worst, awfulest thing you've ever experienced. You have to go through some rancid goo to get there, and it will stick to you. But you get to change something that's shredding your insides every day of your life.
Do you do it? Who could resist, right?
After reading this book, I'd say you'd hesitate a good long while before answering. Change comes only at a price. Prices have a way of changing, even though you think you know what they are. Ever bid on something at an auction? Do you honestly think for an instant about the commission, the taxes, the shipping, the added insurance, that winning the auction will entail?
No you don't, and don't lie, it's not nice.
Max the forty-year-old falls in love with Gabrielle the nineteen-year-old. (Ewww, right?) She loves him right back, passionately and completely. Right up until she screws another man and Max walks in on it.
Oh, poor duped oldster. Sniff boo hoo, at least you got some nineteen-year-old...uhhh, well. So what do you do? Run away, go home, leave your job in New Orleans to go back to (grim, unpleasantly stuffy) Boston.
Four months before Katrina. Which kills Gabrielle.
And back comes Max to bury the woman he loves, the woman he'd do anything at all to save, to rescue, to ask "why?" of (and the answer is never, ever one you want to hear, why do people insist on asking it?). He meets Ray, a old man with a proposition: Follow this map of moments, this guided tour of New Orleans's magical history, and you'll land up at a Moment where you can save Gabrielle's life! She'll be alive! Isn't that what you want, Max?
Oh, be careful what you ask for lest the answer be yes...for getting what we ask for isn't always (ever, in my actual experience) for the (personal) best. Max gets a chance to see the hidden magic that sustains New Orleans, and he gets to put right some very basic wrongs, and the price he pays is breathtakingly high.
And I will bet you large sums of money that he'd do it all again. He's that kind of a guy. It's the reason I liked spending my rainy, gloomy Friday with him, and I'll bet you would too.
Do you do it? Who could resist, right?
After reading this book, I'd say you'd hesitate a good long while before answering. Change comes only at a price. Prices have a way of changing, even though you think you know what they are. Ever bid on something at an auction? Do you honestly think for an instant about the commission, the taxes, the shipping, the added insurance, that winning the auction will entail?
No you don't, and don't lie, it's not nice.
Max the forty-year-old falls in love with Gabrielle the nineteen-year-old. (Ewww, right?) She loves him right back, passionately and completely. Right up until she screws another man and Max walks in on it.
Oh, poor duped oldster. Sniff boo hoo, at least you got some nineteen-year-old...uhhh, well. So what do you do? Run away, go home, leave your job in New Orleans to go back to (grim, unpleasantly stuffy) Boston.
Four months before Katrina. Which kills Gabrielle.
And back comes Max to bury the woman he loves, the woman he'd do anything at all to save, to rescue, to ask "why?" of (and the answer is never, ever one you want to hear, why do people insist on asking it?). He meets Ray, a old man with a proposition: Follow this map of moments, this guided tour of New Orleans's magical history, and you'll land up at a Moment where you can save Gabrielle's life! She'll be alive! Isn't that what you want, Max?
Oh, be careful what you ask for lest the answer be yes...for getting what we ask for isn't always (ever, in my actual experience) for the (personal) best. Max gets a chance to see the hidden magic that sustains New Orleans, and he gets to put right some very basic wrongs, and the price he pays is breathtakingly high.
And I will bet you large sums of money that he'd do it all again. He's that kind of a guy. It's the reason I liked spending my rainy, gloomy Friday with him, and I'll bet you would too.