This is a creative blend of history and fantasy, with many plot turns and twists. It would seem to make a good movie, with the lovingly detailed portrait of fin de siècle Vienna. Very believable interactions with Freud, the child Hitler, and Gustav Mahler emerge, and Freud even figures in the final plot moves. I got interested in how Freud's Oedipal theory might factor into things, and it seemed there were some Jungian archetypes at play as well. But I will leave that for others more schooled in...

I started reading this book awhile ago and decided to finish it. I'm a little torn as I liked the history but it can be confusing with the back and forth, and the switch of characters and narrator. The book also never really explained how they went back in time. They just did. The history is interesting, though. I am curious enough to attempt reading the sequel.

Edwards spent over thirty years writing this book – he began it in 1974 and continued to rework and refine the story until 2007, when he finally deemed it complete (see http://www.seldenedwards.com/about-li...). The incredibly well-written story encompasses time travel, true love, rock-and-roll, turn-of-the-century Vienna (that would be the nineteenth century), baseball, fate, family (lives, loves and drama), mid-life crises, and the vagaries of fame. It makes the reader think about his/her conc...

I wanted so much to like it, to get all caught up in it. I kept reading cause I thought there would come a resolution of voices, historical characters intermingled with fictional ones, some reason to have gotten to the end. But when the end came I was so glad to put the book down. I wanted to explore time travel, especially to fin de siecle Vienna, a glorious, vibrant time and place. But I just kept getting bogged down. Stray, competing lines of thought crossed and recrossed constantly. The wri...

Do you like stories about love, music, and time travel? Do you enjoy a dash of celebrity and a sprinkling of intertwining history? Are you inspired by creative teachers and talented storytellers? If the answer is yes, you should read this book! I began this book somewhat apprehensively (not always sure about the time travel aspect), but soon embraced it wholeheartedly. It was a lovely story to be swept away with and I really liked the settings of Boston and Vienna. As I proceeded through the boo...

Time-travel tales, as intricate as they are, require a special touch, a unique understanding of cause and effect. As such they are incredibly easy to write poorly and at the same time quite difficult to write well.There is a long tradition to the cyclical nature of these tales, beginning, arguably with Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, The Flying Trunk and continued a century later with Richard Matheson's Somewhere in Time in the 1970s and most recently with Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Tra...

First of all, BEWARE of reviews that give away too much of this plot (that's you, amazon!) because it will ruin your reading to know too many of the intricate details of this novel. I'm intentionally vague below because key plot elements were given away in some reviews I read.The time-travel aspect makes you think it's sci-fi, but it's really more of historical fiction in the exhaustive detailing of 1867 Vienna. It also touches on psychology, romance, and philosophy (those who love the time-trav...

I really wanted to give this book three stars but I just can't. To me itseemed like a case of a wonderful idea, sort of Jack Finney Meets JohnIrving, coming unfortunately to someone who just doesn't have the skill orthe ease to realize it effectively. The writing itself is perfectly soundand literate, but for me the author didn't have the command to carry off hisridiculously complicated structure - featuring multiple narrative lines,multiple time periods, and constantly changing angles of view, ...

Dilly Burden was a legend and a hero. He excelled at his Boston boys' school and at Harvard, was a star baseball player and gave his life in World War II when he was tortured and killed by the Gestapo in France. His only son, Wheeler, has no memory of his Dad but has spent his life living up to the legend.Where Dilly was an icon, Wheeler is more eccentric. He followed in his father's footsteps to the Boston boys' school and despite guidance from a much beloved teacher, the Haze, (who had also ta...