時光邊緣的男人

An OK book. There's no big plot to speak of, it's like reading someone's diary as they experience life over decades and how that changes and motivates them. The people they meet, lose touch with and find again. The joys, pain, heartbreak, fear, and finally joy again. It's an interesting life which was the part that kept it engaging. Nearer the end is when I felt the meaning of it all which, essentially, is "Get busy living or get busy dying" in the metaphical sense. I felt happy for the main character by the end, that he wasn't allowing fear to control him anymore and began to see joy in everything, even the seemingly mundane. 

Unfortunately, this is one of those books where the blurb on the cover sounds amazing but ends up having little to do with the actual story. All the elements you THINK the book is going to be about is mostly just a rushed final couple chapters. The love story mentioned is really a small subplot at best and barely worth mentioning. This was a slow read and didn’t have any real plot outside of Tom just reminiscing about different moments throughout time/his life. He’s kinda over life at this point and the only thing that keeps him going is the hope to find his daughter. For someone who was over 400 years old and got to be present for so many world changing events and apparently meet most major historical characters of his times, he really chose to live the most boring, mundane life. I’m rounding this up to 3 stars because I did enjoy reading about all the different time periods and people in history and enjoyed the language of the prose. Lots of good quotes and the overall message of not being so caught up in our past or so worried about our future that we stop enjoying and LIVING the present.