Book review: 'The Time Keeper'

Book: The Time Keeper
Author: Mitch Albom
Publisher: Hachette India
Pages: 222
Price: Rs499

I first encountered Mitch Albom by chance. A co-passenger on a local train gave me her copy of For One More Day, Albom’s second novel, and said I would probably find it interesting. I did. It took a stranger to introduce me to what she felt was the value of time, or as she put it, “not ruing the fact that we cannot go back in time and change our past”. So it feels like serendipity that much of Albom’s newest book, The Time Keeper is about two complete strangers who are made to appreciate the time they have at their disposal.  

The Time Keeper is a fable-like story of a man who invented the world’s first clock and so became Father Time. Young Dor grows up in an idyllic little village, in the company of the pretty Alli and the power hungry Nim. Nim grows up to be a powerful king, Dor and Alli get married and have three children. Dor, we are told, is special because God is watching him. Unlike the others around him, Dor isn’t interested in wealth or power. He wants to measure time. He invents the world’s first sundial, clock and calendar. He is, quite literally, ahead of his time.

For this, Dor, or Father Time, is punished. He is banished to a cave where he must now listen to the consequences of teaching man to count time. “Soon man will count all his days, and then smaller segments of the day, and then smaller still — until the counting consumes him, and the wonder of the world he has been given is lost.”

Dor spends centuries in the cave, alone and without ageing. Keeping him company are the voices of all those who keep wishing they had more time.

Six thousand years later, Dor is finally freed. He now has a mission. He has to teach two people on earth the true value of time. Enter the rich businessman, Victor Delamonte, and teenager, Sarah Lemon. Victor has been given the death sentence by his doctor, but is determined to find a way to cheat death and prolong his life. Meanwhile, smart but unpopular Sarah is left heartbroken by the boy she loves and decides to kill herself. In a sequence that is as unbelievable as they come, the lives of the three main characters collide and settle into an ultimately happy ending.

The Time Keeper is one of those books that, despite almost farcical sequences, works because of its message. Albom’s style of writing is fluent, simple and with an emphasis on brevity. It explores time from various aspects: its creation, its use and abuse and how its value varies from person to person.

It is not easy to imagine a world without timekeeping and yet, Albom’s right: the more we count time — and there are many ways of counting it — the more misery it creates. “Man alone measures time. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.”