Through flashbacks, we see their relationship unfold, and gradually get a sense of whether Polly is right to believe Frank would wait for her. For Polly, their separation was only moments ago, but for Frank it's been seventeen years (he went the long way 'round). Polly needs something to cling to, and that something is the hope of finding Frank, her boyfriend from the past. The system is rigged against her and any attempt to navigate the mind-boggling bureaucracy is doomed to fail. She suddenly finds herself on the lowest rung of society, no status, money, or independence and in massive debt to her employer. Polly, our protagonist, is not just a time traveler, she's also a refugee from the past and an indentured labourer trying to work off the cost of her passage. Instead, the book takes you on a tour of the immigrant experience. It appears to promise a pandemic/dystopia with a time travel twist, and a bit of a love story to boot. Alone in a transformed and divided America, with no status and no money, Polly must navigate a new life and find a way to locate Frank, to determine if he is alive, and if their love has endured.Īn Ocean of Minutes is a gorgeous and heartbreaking story that paints an intimate portrait of endurance and complexity of human relationships and the cost of holding onto the past-and the price of letting it go.Īn Ocean of Minutes pulls a bait-and-switch that I expect will frustrate and confuse some readers. Polly promises to meet Frank again in Galveston, Texas, where she will arrive in twelve years.īut when Polly is re-routed an extra five years into the future, Frank is nowhere to be found. When she finds out there’s a company that has invented time travel, she agrees to a radical contract: if she signs up for a one-way-trip into the future to work as a bonded laborer, the company will pay for the life-saving treatment Frank needs. When Frank catches the virus, his girlfriend Polly will do whatever it takes to save him-even if it means risking everything. In this novel America is in the grip of a deadly flu pandemic. Shortlisted for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize and a Best Book of the Year according to Real Simple, the Globe and Mail, and the CBC, this follows the love story of two people who are at once mere weeks and many years apart.
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