I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, as I find Emily St. John Mandel's writing delicious. Science fiction written as literature more than as a genre novel. Time travel stories are pretty much all the same in their impossibility, and this one doesn't break out of the mold. But what Mandel does within the mold is highly enjoyable. The characters and situations are something you can feel deep sympathy for--Olive Llywellen's book tour exhaustion at the end of normal life, Gaspery's obsessive pursuit of the novel's central mystery, all the other supporting cast that built out the story--very satisyfing.
To me it feels like a more ambitious, less conventional novel was within reach here, which is why I hold back a bit in my review. Loose ends could have been left untied. But it's very good as is.
Mandel discusses the simulation hypothesis a lot, since it's a central part of the plot. Personally I think that if time travel is possible then the simulation hypothesis pretty much has to be true--events are foreordained. But here, as in most time travel novels, the simulated beings can somehow affect the simulation, and I don't think that would be possible.
But Mandel has the very best answer for simulation-obsessed folks--so what? Simulated lives are still lives lived.
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