An Ocean of Minutes: A Novel

Written by Thea Lim

Narrated by Lisa Rost-Welling

A shortlisted finalist for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the ALA 2019 Reading List for Science Fiction

“Thea Lim’s An Ocean of Minutes is that rare thing—a speculative novel that is as heartfelt as it is philosophical. In lucid prose, Lim lays bare the complexities of migration and displacement, while offering a clear-eyed meditation on the elusive nature of human devotion.” —Esi Edugyan, Man Booker Prize Finalist and author of Washington Black

“Lim paints a strange and unfamiliar world with her novel, full of fascinating social commentary on class differences, racism, and sexism.” —The Los Angeles Times

In September 1981, Polly and Frank arrive at the time travel terminal at Houston Intercontinental Airport. One will travel, and one will stay.

America is in the grip of a deadly flu pandemic. Frank has caught the virus and Polly will do whatever it takes to save him, even if it means risking everything. So she agrees to a radical plan—time travel has been invented in the future to thwart the virus. 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. Polly promises to meet Frank again in Galveston, Texas, where she will arrive in twelve years.

But when Polly is re-routed an extra five years into the future, Frank is nowhere to be found. Alone in a changed and divided America, with no status and no money, Polly must navigate a new life and find a way to locate Frank, to discover if he is alive, and if their love has endured. “Lim’s enthralling novel succeeds on every level: as a love story, an imaginative thriller, and a dystopian narrative” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Jul 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781508257868

Thea Lim

Thea Lim’s writing has been published by Granta, The Paris Review, The Guardian, Salon, The Globe and Mail, The Southampton Review and others. She holds an MFA from the University of Houston and previously served as nonfiction editor at Gulf Coast. She grew up in Singapore and lives in Toronto, where she is a professor of creative writing.

Reviews for An Ocean of Minutes

[Matt Poteet · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I love time travel books. This one misses the mark because it’s difficult to read and ultimately doesn’t end up going anywhere.

[Cheryl Morrell · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

That’s the ending????? Ugh the story was good. I enjoyed it but that ending. Noooooo…. I need more closure

[smits_52 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This may not have been the best choice of novels to read in 2020. I found it quite depressing. I also never quite got the time travel part straight in my head and the finding each other part. It was fuzzy. It could just be me but I never quite invested in this novel.

[ldvoorberg · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Two stars, not because of the writing. The writing is good; the plot is interesting. She enslaved herself with a time travel company to earn medical help for him during a pandemic, but their plan to meet up again in the future goes awry. The "future" world is very dystopic and crazy, interesting unique concepts. What I don't like about the story is her naivety of love and how things should work out simply because she desperately loves him. Flashbacks make them seem like a perfect couple, as if their perfect relationship should make me feel her hope and pain too. I don't. I roll my eyes at her blindness and stupidity. Other characters are figuring things out, why can't she. At least the conclusion is not all rainbows and kittens.

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Polly signs on to time travel to the future as a sort of indentured servant to help rebuild America in order that her lover Frank will receive the necessary health care to save him from the pandemic that is raging in 1981. She is only traveling to 1993, so she and Frank make careful plans about when and where to meet in the future. He will be 12 years older and she will be the same age as she presently is, but hopefully they can carry on. What could go wrong?This was a quick and easy read of a well-rendered dystopian America, where the poor (and indentured laborers) exist only to provide for the comfort of the wealthy few. Polly meets many obstacles as she tries to make her way back to Frank in the future.3 stars

[randymetcalfe · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

It’s 1981. There is a virulent pandemic that is wiping out a vast percentage of the world’s population. Polly appears to be immune. The love of her life, Frank, has got it. Apparently there is some kind of cure, but it’s really expensive. Oh, and there is some company seeking volunteers for time travel into the future, the payment for which can be the medical expenses needed to help someone now with the disease. Polly decides to risk everything to save Frank. They agree to meet at a particular place in the future. And, well, it all goes a bit sideways.With such an involved, almost rococo premise, you might expect interesting fireworks as this novel progresses. Not so much. The writing is leaden. And the characters are pencil thin. But worse, Polly is just dim. She isn’t presented as unintelligent. But her actions, almost all of them, are nearly ridiculous. You just can’t help throwing up your hands, again and again. However, she’s not alone. The love of her life, Frank, is equally unimaginably dim. It made them utterly unbelievable and unsympathetic.When Polly exits from the time machine, she discovers that she has overshot her expected date of arrival of 1993. It is actually 1998. There follows an excruciating sequence of chapters as Polly learns about the very different world in which she has arrived. Of course this is not helped by the fact that Polly’s choices and actions are all ridiculously poor.An interesting premise utterly squandered. And definitely not recommended.

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the 1980s, a flu pandemic is sweeping the world, and also time travel has been invented. Some people opt to travel into the future "to rebuild the world," and Polly is one of these, motivated because it will enable her boyfriend, Frank, to get treatment for the flu. They agree to meet in the future, but she is rerouted to a later year and a radically changed world. The future is a bleak dystopia where Polly is essentially an indentured servant living in horrific conditions in Galveston and helping to create luxury goods for resorts for rich tourists. It's basically a capitalism-run-amok nightmare. As she navigates through this hellscape, Polly holds onto her hope that she will be reunited with Frank. The book has a bittersweet ending that felt very true to me. This was an engaging read and an interesting twist on time travel that I sometimes found unrelentingly depressing.

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book was chosen for the 2019 Canada Reads longlist but it's been on my radar for quite a while. I am glad to say that I was not disappointed as I sometimes am when a book has received a lot of advance praise. Will it make it to the shortlist? The theme this year is "One Book to Move You" and, for me, this book certainly fulfills that theme. It however is not set in Canada nor does it have any connection to Canada and for Canadian purists that might be a drawback. I will have to wait until Jan 31 to see the books on the short list but I hope this one does if only so I can hear what the panelists think of it.Polly and Frank are lovers living in Buffalo NY in the 1970s. Polly's parents are dead and she lives with her aunt Donna. Frank has a large extended (and Italian) family. They plan to marry and have children but think they have all the time in the world to do that. Then in 1981 a pandemic hits the world and Polly and Frank are stuck in Texas because travel is forbidden. Frank gets the virus and Polly decides to time travel to 1993 because then Frank can be treated and saved. They make a plan to meet in Galveston in 1993 when Polly is supposed to come through. Except she gets rerouted to 1998 and she can't find any trace of Frank. Galveston suffered greatly in the devastation that followed the pandemic but it is now rebuilding as a tourist destination. Polly's skills as an upholsterer are in demand to refurbish hotels to look like the grand hotels of the past. But life is pretty hard even as a skilled worker and then she loses her skilled worker status. This means she would have to work even longer to repay her bond to the time travelling company. Polly knows Frank survived because he made several inquiries about her before she emerged in 1998 but she can't find him in Texas. Texas and other parts of the south are now a separate country from the rest of the US and there is not much communication between the two. Polly is close to despair many times but something or someone always proves to her that it is worth carrying on. The truly lovely message of this story is that as bad as a situation is there can be hope.Thea Lim is a wonderful writer and I think, for a first novel, this is an exquisite piece. There's a beautiful piece about Polly and Frank on page 146:She sleeps with her arm around him, she sleeps with her hand on his thigh. She tucks her hand into his waistband, she sweeps her thumb across his eye. He puts her hand in his pocket. He frees her hair from her collar. He wipes a tear from her nose. He gets the fuzz off her lashes. He does the zip on her dress. He kneads the knot in her spine. He kisses her shoulder, he kisses her temple, he kisses her mouth, he kisses her eyes. He kisses her cheek, he kisses her thigh, he kisses her elbow, he kisses her eyes.If you read that passage aloud it is just poetry.

[lostinalibrary · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In Thea Lim's engrossing alternate history, An Ocean of Minutes, in 1981, a pandemic is sweeping the world. In the US, treatment is expensive but there is a solution. Time travel exists. Healthy people who wish to save their loved ones can agree to go the future as indentured labourers. Polly and Frank had been planning on getting married when he tests positive for the disease. Polly signs up to go to 1993 and she and Frank make plans to meet when he finally arrives in twelve years. But things don't go as planned and Polly is sent to 1998, a time when the United States has split apart and she is now in what is called America while the United States and Frank are on the other side of a well-guarded border. Although An Ocean of Minutes is a dystopian novel, it is less about the pandemic that caused it but, rather, ordinary people trying to survive in extraordinary times and about the importance of memories and hope to sustain us through those times. The story moves back and forth in time divided between when Frank and Polly meet, fall in love, and she agrees to travel to save him to 1998 and beyond as Polly tries to settle into this new unfamiliar world while waiting for Frank to arrive from the past. This is Lim's debut novel and what an impressive debut it is. It is very well-written and compelling tale with complex and interesting characters whose histories we care about, a well-formed alternate America. I recommend it highly and am looking forward to what Lim does in the future.Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review

[froxgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dystopia in this novel is hell without other people. In 1981, there's a pneumonia-like disease decimating the US, and a corporation has invented short haul trips into the near future for those uninfected. Polly signs on as an indentured worker and leaves her boyfriend Frank behind, hoping he'll recover by the time they rendezvous, and sets her sights on a 1993 reunion. The bumbling and heartless TimerRaiser company overshoots and sends Polly to 1998, where Frank cannot be found, and she is betrayed and rewarded, as the novel slides back and forth between their relationship and Polly's misadventures in the future. It's about as non-SciFi as this type of imagining can be, and both riveting and rewarding to cheer Polly and Frank on.

[texasbooklover · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

SCIENCE FICTIONThea LimAn Ocean of Minutes: A NovelTouchstone Books Hardcover, 978-1-5011-9255-5 (also available as an e-book and an audiobook), 320 pgs., $26.00July 10, 2018 Frank and Polly are falling in varying degrees of love. Winter is awfully cold in Buffalo, New York so the two take off on a lark for climes South, missing the interchange for New Orleans and washing up in Galveston. When the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) loses control of a virulent flu virus, the resulting pandemic traps Frank and Polly in Texas as the government attempts to contain the contagion. When Frank falls ill without health insurance, forcing previously unthinkable choices, Polly signs on with the Rebuild America Time Travel Initiative to secure the treatment Frank needs. “There is no flu in 2002.” “Travel to the future and rebuild America.” She and Frank arrange a time and place to meet in the future when he is well again.But Polly is rerouted and emerges into a dystopian future five years later than agreed, where the pandemic and attempts to protect against it have destroyed societal norms, rearranged international borders, deepened the chasm between socio-economic divisions, and nature is inexorably reclaiming the folly of human industry and infrastructure. Polly must try to find Frank while serving out her bond to TimeRaiser, the corporation that paid for her time travel and Frank’s healthcare. An Ocean of Minutes: A Novel is the first book from Thea Lim, a graduate of the University of Houston’s renown creative writing program. Her work has appeared in The Southampton Review, The Guardian, Salon, and The Millions, among other outlets, and she is a former nonfiction editor at Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. An Ocean of Minutes is an impressive debut about the privilege of autonomy, the duality of hope, and both the power and the limits of love.Lim provides richly detailed families and backstories for Frank and Polly, both well developed and compelling characters. Third-person narrations trade points-of-view, moving back and forth through time, offering representative vignettes and instructive memories, clues to the story of Frank and Polly, which is sweet without being sappy and intimate without being awkward.“Look at me. I’m not like them!” Polly insists, then she begins to cry from “shame that she had said such a thing, and out of fear that she had to.” Lim immerses us in Polly’s overwhelming powerlessness and makes us consider the nature of time and the dangerous delusions of nostalgia. “We’re getting the past back, but better. It will be the way we like to remember it instead of the way it was,” Polly’s boss tells her. “People will pay anything for that.” The characters in An Ocean Minutes are well-meaning, ordinary people making desperate choices under extraordinary circumstances in an alien America. Technically, Lim’s work is classified as science fiction, but the only thing far-fetched about An Ocean of Minutes is the time travel.

[bonniemarjorie · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

“TimeRaiser is a good company. We’ll protect you. Today, or rather tomorrow, is the first day of the rest of your life. It’s a gift.”In the year 1981, the flu has devastated the world. When the ability to time travel becomes a reality, doctors attempt to go back to the beginning to prevent the flu from ever becoming an issue but limitations on travel prevent them from going back that far. Being infected is certain death and when Polly’s boyfriend Frank becomes infected, she agrees to a 32-month contract with TimeRaiser: in exchange for medical aid to cure Frank, Polly will travel to the year 1993 to help rebuild the physical elements of society. Goodbyes are conducted quickly with the two promising to meet the year she was due to arrive except Polly finds herself in the year 1998 instead. Filled with uncertainty in a world that used to be familiar, Polly must learn to cope with the past decisions that have changed her future irrevocably.‘She had done it all without understanding the weight of what she was doing. Until this moment, the choice she’d made had kept its true, perverse nature secret: it was irreversible, and only comprehensible after it was done.’With flashes between past and present, An Ocean of Minutes tells the story of Frank and Polly and why Polly would be willing to make such a monumental decision so that the two of them had a chance for a shared future. This story shares many genres, time travel, post-apocalyptic, and romance, but Lim balances the elements nicely and one never overwhelmed the other. The post-apocalyptic aspects were eerie, with the United States of America being divided into a section called The United States and a separate section called America. TimeRaiser’s employees are assigned codes based on the type of work they are assigned to do with some individuals making new tiles for new flooring, or other individuals ride exercise bikes all day to power resorts (reminding me vividly of Fifteen Million Merits. Any Black Mirror fans?) Polly is fortunate enough to be a skilled laborer and is assigned to restore old furniture where she’s granted certain liberties that regular “Journeymen” are not.Life is still far from easy and nothing like the life that she left behind and Polly is forced to deal with far more than she ever anticipated when she signed up. Finding Frank is always at the forefront of her mind and was what kept these pages turning most for me: I was eager to know if Polly’s sacrifices would pay off for her and possibly Frank as well. The story’s pace is admittedly unhurried and despite the shocking nature of the world Polly finds herself in, it’s not exactly what I would call thrilling. Despite all this, I found myself completely enthralled in finding out the ending. The story concludes instead with a life lesson on impermanence, the reality of change, and a bit of a cynical approach to love. Realistic or not, I found it concluded most disappointingly.‘In her heart, the past was not another time, but another place that still existed. It was just that she had taken a wrong turn.’