All Our Wrong Todays
A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Choice 2017
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All Our Wrong Todays
Buy Now for £9.48
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Narrated by:
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Elan Mastai
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By:
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Elan Mastai
Summary
Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of All Our Wrong Todays, written and read by Elan Mastai.
Tom lives in a perfect world: no war, no poverty, no under-ripe avocados. . . oh, and time travel. When he loses the love of his life, going back to fix it seems like the only answer. . . what could possibly go wrong?
Elan Mastai's breakthrough novel brings a whole new dimension to a classic love story
So, the thing is, I come from the world we were supposed to have.
That means nothing to you, obviously, because you live here, in the crappy world we do have.
But it never should've turned out like this. And it's all my fault - well, me and to a lesser extent my father.
And, yeah, I guess a little bit Penelope.
In both worlds, she's the love of my life. But only a single version of her can exist.
I have one impossible chance to fix history's greatest mistake and save this broken world.
Except it means saving one Penelope and losing the other forever - and I have absolutely no idea which to choose . . .
Praise for All Our Wrong Todays
'A thrilling tale of time travel and alternate timelines with a refreshingly optimistic view of humanity's future'
Andy Weir, author of international bestseller The Martian
'A novel about time travel has no right to be this engaging. A novel this engaging has no right to be this smart. And a novel this smart has no right to be this funny. Or insightful. Or immersive. Basically, this novel has no right to exist."
Jonathan Tropper, New York Times bestselling author of This Is Where I Leave You and One Last Thing Before I Go
'Elan Mastai has conjured up a witty and freewheeling time-traveling romance that packs an emotional wallop.All Our Wrong Todays is a page-turning delight'
Maria Semple, author of Today Will Be Different and Where'd You Go, Bernadette
Critic reviews
A novel about time travel has no right to be this engaging.
A novel this engaging has no right to be this smart.
And a novel this smart has no right to be this funny. Or insightful. Or immersive.
Basically, this novel has no right to exist."
I am slightly surprised that this is currently classified on Audible as 'Chick Lit' and I think this is a shame as it could alienate a lot of readers/listeners who would not possibly consider reading anything in this genre. I accept that love is a very strong theme within the story but I think a more appropriate genre would be Speculative Fiction (something particularly loved by one of the main characters) and perfectly describes this mixture of science fiction and philosophical musings.
Books read by their own authors are frequently unpopular but Elan Mastai is an excellent narrator and handles the roller coaster of emotions extremely well.
Now I have finished this, I wish I had a time machine that would take me back to the point when I began listening to this brilliant story but I guess that is an ambition I had better keep to myself!
The point of it all....
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This is a book with interesting concepts.
This is a book with interesting concepts and a different take on time travel to anything else I have read.
This is a book with interesting concepts and a different take on time travel to anything else I have read that uses some literary techniques that are very annoying to listen to.
This is one.
There are also moments when entire chapters of the story are summarised, bringing you through the last couple of chapters you have just heard.
The chapter that was comprised entirely of the words f*ck and sh*t for more than 2 minutes of listening time and the chapter that was written backwards were a complete waste of time.
I enjoyed the differences between the two worlds and people in the two, and the idea of temporal drag (although where Tom gets this term from is uncertain) and without giving too much away, Mastai has some really clever insights into the consequences of time travel which I enjoyed.
Worth a read if you're into the genre, but don't be afraid of missing anything if you skip the chapter that is summary, swearing or backwards. You won't.
Repetitive
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Character performance, at the very least an effort to differentiate male and female voices,makes or breaks a 5 star rating in an audiobook, in my opinion, so my rating can't go as high as the 5 the novel deserves.
Great story but...
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The concept of this book is not what I expected this book would be and it is a really good read? for me it's a great listen! The protagonist is not a hero, the ending is not as you would expect and it makes you think about your own life. The expectations you have for your own mortal days on this planet. There is also a lot of insight into the personalities in the book and why they behave as they do. On that basis it is very realistic they are very believable characters . Raw people, not people as they would wish to be portrayed. The story line fits back together seamlessely in spite of all the time travel and it is very well thought out.
The only thing that I am surprised by on each 'listen' is the number of times that a thing is described. It is as though the author needs to describe things as a litany. There is a rhythm to it which means it is ok once you get into the reading style, but I'm surprised that the publisher let it through so many times.
that said...
please write some more books!
thank you! 🙂
Not what I expected.
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Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
I guess I should learn not to raise expectations too high. I went for this because it was recommended as science fiction with some interesting characters and a bit of a brain. This is true, but the book feel ultimately unsatisfying and overly neat.The is a time travel yarn with some interesting points to make about changing things and expectations. In a way the book is a metaphor for entitlement in an unpredictable world but really it avoids anything seriously challenging.
There are points where this or that character has an unexpected take on the events of the book, and for a moment there I thought that the whole thing was going to defy expectations and lead to an interesting unreliable narrator being revealed and increased ambiguity. I got the feeling this what the author wanted but that it was sacrificed to the gods of accessibility and easy-reading.
There are also some nagging technical plot holes, such as why it is possible that the character can spend 50 years isolated on a particular journey (trying to avoid spoilers here) and not go completely insane, starve to death, or indeed age.
This promised quite a bit but was ultimately unsatisfying.
How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?
Be more challengingWhat does Elan Mastai bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?
This is well-read, and having the author narrate is nice but he does sound quite generic.If this book were a film would you go see it?
possibly.A novel with hidden shallows
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