The premise of this novel is quite intriguing - it toys with time travel and asks, what event, in a chain of events, would you change to prevent someone you love from committing a murder. It’s a worthy question and one that engages the reader from the start. It is a moral question too for even the smallest alteration could have major implications. But who wouldn’t go back in time, if only to eliminate regret?
Surely then it would be possible to chase perfection, to ensure that we become the best person, the best parent, and in this case, the best mother. McAllister presents us with a busy, working mum, and the three men in her life: her father, son and husband. On one level she is an everywoman, carrying those small guilts that we all recognise when we juggle career, family and relationships.
Ask yourself, if you could go back in time, what would you do differently? Second time around, would you try to make it to your son’s 16th birthday? Would you be there when your father died? Would you notice if your husband had secrets? Yes, yes you would. These are all the glorious second chances that our protagonist Jen embraces during the course of this tightly plotted novel.
Of course, McAllister masterfully manoeuvres the plot timeline, but it is the powerful emotional weight of the text that makes this book a winner for me. There is one powerful scene in particular that I will never forget, when Jen spends an afternoon with her father, knowing that his life is about to end. In a book that is propelled backwards at breakneck speed, there is little time to pause, but in this scene, time stands still. “They are standing in his dining room, In between his living room and kitchen. The light outside is beautiful, illuminating a shaft of dust in front of his patio doors.’ McAllister minutely describes her father’s house - the furniture, the dark wood, the kettle bubbling on the stove. She puts us right in the kitchen with her father and asks us, would you save him if you could? Of course we would. Isn’t it the ultimate wish - to have one more day with our departed loved ones? And this isn’t the only question that we are presented with. The whole novel pulsates with huge questions and observations about familial relationships, such as when Jen’s father tells her, ‘You never want your child to feel like they were a burden.’
Light is also used to focus our attention in the pivotal scene with Todd and Jen at the cafe on his birthday, ‘The overhead lights, on some sort of sensor, begin to go off, leaving their bench spot lit in the middle, alone, like they’re in a play.’ This is where Todd tells his mother that he doesn’t blame her for being a busy mum. This moment in key in the plot and in their relationship. He simply says, ‘You’re human … I wouldn’t have you any other way mother’, and with that the readers share a collective sigh. It is alright. We are alright. It is OK to shed the guilt. It is a momentous moment, one which propels the plot forward and engages the reader, offering us forgiveness for imagined failings. In this book, McAllister fulfils our collective desire which makes this book, much more than a murder mystery
Unlike Kate Atkinson’s foray into time travel with her wonderful novel, Life After Life, McAllister doesn’t turn back time to change monumental moments in history, she journeys to right the wrongs in her family’s relationships, to heal any pain that she may have caused others, but more than anything, to heal the pain, doubts, and guilt within herself, and in turn within the reader.
There is never a wrong time to read a good book, and in Wrong Place Wrong Time McAllister travels back in time to remind us all that how we use our time right now is all that matters.
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