As some of you may know, Butterfly, a novel is tangentially about time travel.
Claire North, author of the dazzling The Fifteen First Lives of Harry August, has written a blog post for Waterstones about just that very subject, since her book has a slightly different take on time travel than the usual “hop in a machine/Delorean and visit the past or future” bent.
It’s a good read about the problems every writer faces when thinking about writing about time travel. While Butterfly involves a machine and is of the (slightly) more traditional time travel narrative, it also doesn’t harp on that fact. Like Ms. North mentions:
“However, the stories we write are still stories about people – perhaps people beset on all sides by paradox and physics, but still people. “
Butterfly has always been about, first and foremost, the people: William Murphy, retired professional hockey player, Laura, his wife and now breadwinner for the family, their daughter, Sadie, Germaine, William’s ex-teammate and childhood buddy, and a venue that approaches time travel from yet another point of view, Old Sturbridge Village.
But while you’re waiting for Butterfly to come out, go read Claire North’s blog post, and then hit the library or your local book shop to pick up The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August.
