Hazards of Time Travel

A Novel

By: Joyce Carol Oates

Narrated by: Andi Arndt

An ingenious, dystopian novel of one young woman’s resistance against the constraints of an oppressive society, from the inventive imagination of Joyce Carol Oates

“Time travel” — and its hazards—are made literal in this astonishing new novel in which a recklessly idealistic girl dares to test the perimeters of her tightly controlled (future) world and is punished by being sent back in time to a region of North America — “Wainscotia, Wisconsin”—that existed eighty years before. Cast adrift in time in this idyllic Midwestern town she is set upon a course of “rehabilitation”—but cannot resist falling in love with a fellow exile and questioning the constrains of the Wainscotia world with results that are both devastating and liberating.

Arresting and visionary, Hazards of Time Travel is both a novel of harrowing discovery and an exquisitely wrought love story that may be Joyce Carol Oates’s most unexpected novel so far.

Ending

Performance was great.
Ending ???? That was very disappointing and disjointed from the story. Didn’t seem to fit or conclude it properly.

Traveling Back in Time

The story had parallels with what is happening in the world today. Interesting, but not the most likely of scenarios.

JCO fan but

Oh the ending! I will forever be let down by this ending. I’m not even sure what to do with myself, I’m so unhappy by this ending.

Unique Stiry

So unlike other stores by Joyce Carol Oates. I would go so far as to say it's her best work. The characters are so lifelike and the story premise is very unique and takes you on a journey to unexpected places.

Many Levels, Both sad and Terrifying

On the surface, this is a Dystopian romance novel. A young girl ripped from her family and banished. Long descriptions of her thoughts. All of this is window dressing. It's a very detailed painting of a young woman's mind, but this is the veneer over the story of a world where America has become the worst of what is currently looming, where great lengths are gone to to keep tight control of minds, thoughts, actions - where fear is the ruling emotion, powered by nearly suffocating insecurity and uncertainty. What is real? What is not? Even the parts of this book where a distracted reader might see happiness are horrifying in their deeper truths. A chilling novel of totalitarianism, mind control, and human emotion.

Andi Arndt brought the characters to life, particularly the protagonist, with a clarity that drew me into another world and believed, absolutely, that I was hearing Mary Ellen tell her story... or was it Adriane...?