Review:
The Time Keeper, by Mitch Albom, follows the creator of time. Dor, the main character, is Father Time; he is the Time Keeper, cursed to hear every one of man's cries for time. Published by Hyperion, ISBN: 9781401322786, the book should appeal to anyone who have ever said "I just don't have the time."
As a young man, Dor is the first human to develop a system of counting and measuring time. His discovery leads him to forsake everyone in his life, except one person who is immune to his obsession. This one person, Alli, is the only one who holds the key to access Dor's attention; the only one whose presence has the ability to make Dor forget about his discovery. Dor's motivations are made clear by the author. His environment and his discovery play against each other in a well-developed tension which, in turn, plays into the development of the entire narrative.
Mitch Albom provides enough detail at crucial points in the story to inform the reader of the driving themes of two other supporting characters, Sarah and Victor, who are plagued with being bound by time. Their personal struggles and their lives are driven by their blind constraint. Along with Dor, they are all prisoners of the same device. Only when the protagonist frees Dor, does Dor begin to understand the sentence and the meaning of the very thing he invented. He is a slave, perhaps in Plato's Cave, where he is only exposed to the shadows of thoughts and reality from outside the cave.
He eventually becomes the master of the thing that once held him. He holds the hourglass, where he was once imprisoned and which now maintains control. Before he can guide the others through their obsessions, he is without direction as he discerns the meaning of his hourglass. The suffering and death of his wife was beyond his control in his former life. Would he now have the opportunity to relieve the suffering of others before they ran out of time?
As the story comes to a climax, Dor must discover a way to intervene in the lives of Sarah and Victor. He must provide both of them the keys to escaping their own bonds, but first, Dor as the master of time, must now discover the significance of time. Having the power to effect a thing, we learn, is not the same as having real understanding of the thing. We are often blinded by the very thing we are compelled to worship.
I found the story well-written, with an abbreviated writing style making me feel like I was reading the thoughts of the characters instead of waiting for an author to develop the players for me. I was pleasantly shocked on reading how the sands of time represent "every moment of the universe." Overall, Mitch Albom presents a book where the focus is not on the style, but on the underlying development of the grand theme of time.
I was so engaged by the presentation of the story that I would have guessed it was merely about 50 pages instead of the actual 240. But as I learned, "Time Flies."
Albom粉，他的书都会买的，期盼能有能静下来的时间。
