Charles Waters & Hart Tanner (Middle Falls Time Travel), by Shawn Inmon

[rachelmanija]

Charles Waters is a middle-aged accountant who's clearly autistic, though undiagnosed. He leads a solitary and uneventful life until he's given one month to live. He lives it and dies. Then he wakes up in the doctor's office, being given one month to live...

This is a fun and unusual riff on the Middle Falls formula, give Charles's very short time span in which to make changes. (The Universal Life Center, which annoys me as always, does eventually make some changes too, to give the poor guy a chance.) The story is about how Charles can live his life to the fullest and expand what he thinks are his limits without messing with his essential self. In this case, the key is friendship with a guy in his apartment building whose life is just as limited as Charles's was initially, but in a less obvious way. It's very sweet.

99% of the book treats Charles's unstated but obvious autism as just how he is, not something that needs to be fixed or makes him spiritually special or anything other than an important aspect of his character. There is one bit of dialogue that implies that maybe he's actually God (!!!), of course at the Universal Life Center, but that's never mentioned again and the Universal Life Center characters clearly have no idea what's really going on.

Content notes: Charles dies of cancer, but there's no real details.




Hart Tanner is an elderly con man, currently scamming and being the boy toy of even older ladies, until he dies a particularly miserable death. He wakes up a young man, before his life goes completely to shit, and quickly discovers that every time he dies, he wakes up at the same point. It's the perfect get out of jail free card! Except, of course, a life with no challenges or real relationships eventually gets boring...

The book doesn't go in the obvious direction of being about Hart growing a conscience, realizing how he hurt people, and turning over a new leaf; that does happen, more or less, but it's not what the story is about. Nor, when he meets up with his abusive mother, is it about forgiving and reconciling with her THANK GOD - how that does go down is very satisfying if you had bad parents. What's it mostly about is, as is usual with Middle Falls, creating and maintaining an important relationship. In this case, that relationship is mostly with a little rescue mutt named Mushu. There is dog death in the context of Mushu eventually dying of old age, but because of how time travel works, it's impermanent in a similar way to how Hart's deaths are impermanent. The whole story is really touching.

Both these books were very enjoyable and good examples of the series.

Content notes: Child abuse (mostly in the past), suicide (in the context of knowing you'll just immediately wake up in a new life), dog death (ditto, and peacefully of old age.)