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Customer Reviews of Somewhere In Time

Wonderful romantic tragedy.
It's 1971, and on the flip of a coin, 36 year-old Richard Collier, dying of a brain tumor, travels toward San Diego, and happens upon an old hotel. There he finds the captivating photograph of a young actress, Elise McKenna, who performed at the hotel in 1896. He decides to research everything he can about her. The more he learns, the more deeply he falls in love with her, and the more he's convinced that he has been to her time, and that they were in love. The 1980 movie, Somewhere In Time, starring Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, and Christopher Plummer, was based upon this 1975 novel by Richard Matheson. The novel's pull on the heartstrings, however, is even more intense, and the ending to the novel is much more tragic. The proposed sequel, MEMOIRS OF ELISE (different author), though not nearly as exhaustive as Somewhere in Time, does a good job of suggesting what happened to Elise after Richard disappeared from her life, and the events that helped her discover that Richard had come to her from the future.

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Possibly the greatest romantic tragedy the ever written.
It's 1971, and 36 year-old Richard Collier, dying of a brain tumor, decides to spend his final days traveling the country. On the flip of a coin, he travels toward San Diego, and happens upon an old hotel. There he finds the captivating photograph of a young actress, Elise McKenna, who performed at the hotel in 1896. "... the most gloriously lovely face I have ever seen in my life. I've fallen in love with her." He decides to research everything he can about her, and the more he learns, the more deeply he falls in love with her, and the more deeply convinced he is that; he has been to her time, and that he has had a relationship with her. The 1980 movie, Somewhere In Time, starring Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, and Christopher Plummer, was based upon this 1975 novel by Richard Matheson. Though the dates and locations have been changed in the screenplay, also written by Matheson, the movie pretty much follows the book. The novel's pulls on the heartstrings, however, is even more intense, and the ending to the novel is much more tragic. For those who like romantic tragedy, this could possibly be the greatest ever written.

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"Somewhere In Time" Misses The Mark- Unbelievable & Overdone
Richard Collins is 36 years-old, a writer by profession, intelligent, handsome and dying. He has a temporal-lobe tumor and the doctors give him 4-6 months to live. Richard has never been in love, and feels like he has not even begun to live his life, which is now doomed. He takes off, leaving his job and relatives behind, and decides to drive along the California coast, at whim, and write a book about the dying process. Collins stays at a turn-of-the-century resort in San Diego one night and there sees a portrait of a beautiful woman who lived and died almost 100 years before. He falls truly, deeply, madly in love with the woman in the painting and becomes obsessed with going back in time to find her.

Now, I am a huge fan of excellent romance fiction, and novels about time travel fascinate me. Jack Finney's "Time After Time," and Diane Gabaldon's "Outlander" series are favorites of mine. "Somewhere In Time," however, left me cold. Actually, I found the book annoying and it is only because I am an eternal optimist that I finished it.

The novel is written in a diary format. Richard Collins, the narrator, sounds appropriately desperate and depressed, given his situation. When he fixates on the woman in the portrait, actress Elise McKenna, he becomes obsessive. This obsession might also be appropriate. He is dying and he does have a brain tumor which could make him delusional. However, the reader must suffer along with him as he moans, (literally), for page after page, about how he loves Elise McKenna. Then we go along with him for yet another 50 pages while he repetitively attempts time travel. This is pure and simple narrative padding. Finally, on page 118, Collins arrives in 1896 and when the reader arrives there with him, exhaustion is felt by all. The meeting with Elise and their subsequent, very brief, relationship is simply not believable. And Collins is such a weak, almost hysterical figure, that if the story were easy to accept, one would wonder why a woman would fall for a man like him.

I really wanted to like this novel but in all honesty I cannot recommend it. There is some excellent time travel fiction on the market - books which also include great love stories - this is not one of them.
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