Award-winning Sydney author Jaclyn Moriarty gets us all thinking about past love, joy and regret in her new novel, Time Travel for Beginners
If you could go anywhere in time, for just 20 minutes to relive a moment from your past, or experience life centuries ago, where would it be?
That is the intriguing question author Jaclyn Moriarty elicits for readers of her new book, Time Travel for Beginners. Author of 17 books, mostly in the children and teen genres, this is Jaclyn’s third for adults and has taken 20 years to write.
Jaclyn jokes she was waiting for a breakthrough in time travel theory, but the reality is she needed to research history – all of it!
For the Time Travel Agency is a place which allows you to visit a precise moment of the past – be it a snippet of your life, a David Bowie concert or to roam with dinosaurs. But only for 20 minutes at a time. And you cannot change a thing.
“The Time Travel Agency lets you go anywhere, so I thought I’d better find out about everywhere!” Jaclyn says, smiling. “I gave myself permission to read history books for years. I also wanted to try and see if I could understand how time travel could work, so was reading popular science quantum physics books.”
Luckily for the characters in the book, a brilliant physicist has apparently discovered the secret to time travel. But the scientific community thinks she’s delusional, so those who ‘time travel’ actually think it’s a type of virtual reality, AI, hypnosis, or a drug-fuelled trip.
“I like focusing on characters and human relationships, so the time travel is more a framework for exploring these people and where they are in their lives,” Jaclyn says.
So we meet single mother Anna who starts working at the agency and finds her true calling as a time travel agent – but in her personal life stumbles through relationships and parenting a teen. While she loves the job, she is confused about whether it really is time travel – or just an illusion. Then there’s Teddy whose wife dramatically leaves him for his brother, spurring an addiction to time travel, in his effort to understand where he went wrong in their relationship.
“It’s about the adventure and the fun of time travel,” Jaclyn explains, “and whether it’s worthwhile going back and seeing where you went wrong, and doing it right just one time, even though you know it’s not going to impact the future.”
The setting is in the streets around where Jaclyn lives in Neutral Bay, and it’s depicted as a non-descript café on busy Military Road so it seems quite ‘anonymous.’ The workers are kind but firm with clients, with some outraged when they return in time and it is not as they thought it would be – or how they remembered a moment in their life.
“I’m really interested in how memory is so unreliable and everybody’s perspectives on what has happened, so the book is about being able to go back and see some version of the truth objectively,” Jaclyn reflects.
Sister Liane interviewed Jaclyn at Stanton Library for her first book tour event in Sydney in July
“I love the idea of time travel as an idea of escapism, but it’s also supposed to be about things like when you’ve lost someone. People say ‘I’d give everything I owned to see that person again for five minutes.’
“So the question I wanted to ask is, ‘Would you really do that if you could? And if you could do that every day, then what are you giving up in your own life and how can you move on?’
“When you come back to the present, you’ve still lost the person and you’re experiencing that first loss again for the first time.”
Regardless, Jaclyn says she would like to spend time with her father, who passed in 2020. “He knew I loved him, but we argued about politics a lot through my teenage years,” she reflects. “And I like the idea of going back and saying: ‘I think you are amazing because you are working so hard, for such long hours with six kids.’ And understand a bit more why he might have had those politics and why he might have been a bit cranky sometimes.”
As part of Jaclyn’s research, she looked through her father’s old diaries and talked to both parents about life in the 1950s and 60s. “I wanted actual, immersive, domestic details. The last piece of writing I have from my dad is his list of memories of his own childhood, a milkman coming down the road in his cart and running after him.”
Does she believe time travel is fact, or fiction?
“It is theoretically possible that we could time travel if you were able to figure out how to travel faster than the speed of light,” muses Jaclyn. “Scientists, they make these leaps so we might be able to. I feel like we’re on the verge of being able to.”
And where would she want to visit? “I love the idea of basically anywhere with horses and carriages or steam trains and crowds of people with parasols and hats,” she says.
“But I’d also like to go back and spend time with my son Charlie who is 19 now. So I’d like to have a little bit of time with him as a baby again or a two-year-old so I have those moments.”
Time Travel for Beginners will certainly get you thinking about your life – the parts to be celebrated, even times of regret. And lessons learnt along the way.
Jaclyn is warm and very down to earth – and writes her novels sipping coffee at a café in Kirribilli. I have been lucky enough to interview her big sister Liane, author of New York Times best-selling books like Big Little Lies and Apples Never Fall – and sister Nicola is also an author. Jaclyn reveals they are all very supportive of each other.
“We all understand that ideas can be fragile. And sometimes you might tell somebody, ‘I’ve got this idea.’ And they will just crush it beneath their boot.
“But my sisters, because they are writers, know that even the faintest idea can turn into something. So we will say, ‘Yes, that is ingenious.’”
As part of the book launch, Jaclyn toured Australia and will also visit the USA. Despite her first book being published 26 years ago, she still feels ‘a kind of embarrassment’ during tours. “I always get nervous beforehand and worry and think ‘Why would anybody want to come and see me?’
“But once I get going, I love meeting readers and hearing the different impact that the book has had on them. People have said ‘This book saved me at this time of my life.’
“And I know there have been books that I feel have saved me as well, like when you’re at your saddest or things are the most difficult.”
Magic is sprinkled in all her writing, Jaclyn says, whether for children or grown-ups. “I like books that feel emotionally authentic but have magic at the edges,” she says, with a twinkle in her eye. “I want to believe in magic.”
Time Travel for Beginners is published by Ultimo Press and available now.