I’m a sucker for a good time travel story, and basically found this to be a fairly endearing time travel story with perhaps a little more heart to go along to it. The way the structure works was fascinating and memorable, and the meat of the story itself was pretty solid on a whole.

A fairly great read on a whole.

‪Buying Time by E M Brown https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2018/6/23/buying-time-by-e-m-brown‬

We all have regrets and can recall the days we zigged rather than zagged – said x rather than y and our lives may be very different for good or for ill. In this novel we explore what would happen if you today could go back to certain days knowing what is to come.

Ed Richie is your standard mid-fifties hard-drinking self-loathing writer with a neat line in destroying his relationships (consecutively); after a particularly bad day he wakes up nine months earlier …but all memories intact. Can he change events? Slowly Ed notices a pattern after a few days he can feel himself tugged further and further back. Why is this writer being sucked through time? What is the impact of his arrival in the timestream knowing what is to come? Alongside this we see a dystopian future awaits the UK in 2030. The UK Conservative Govt fell into a dictatorship (as if ermmm) keen on censorship, arrests and violence. The increasingly right-wing US has started to outlaw homosexuality and people are fleeing to the newly independent Scotland. Into this journalist Ella Croft has decided its time to find out why Ed vanished. She has a personal investment in this man she never really understood, and her enquiries bring out people very keen to find her for their own agendas.

There is a lot going on in this novel. The idea of a person falling into their own life is fascinating and how Ed reacts and slowly tests his powers of memory is well done. It feels natural that you first doubt your sanity and then start to roll with it. You may realise you’ve never been the hero you are and that certain stupid things you did have long-reaching consequences with friends and lovers. My only issue is that the focus is very much on Ed rather than the times we are now in. In contrast the future we see Ella in is a horrifyingly plausible future where isolationism and populism create nightmares for the UK and other democracies. This a future where Trump, Brexit and economic collapses all make logical horrible steps to a more sinister country. If Ed’s story is on the personal Ella’s storyis more on how did we get there. It is quite an engrossing mystery as we see how these two are intertwined.

Annoyingly this also leads to the less satisfying part of the story. The focus on Ed is very much a stereotypical firebrand writer stuck in tv and radio. His drinking and constant chain of short-term relationships while is slowly explained often feels very flat. Often, we find his former flames all feel to have some fond feelings and there is a tendency to say he was flawed but not too bad and that doesn’t really come across in his behaviour and in fact just seems to pardon it. Ella’s story comes across as the more interesting as that nightmare world does feel a commentary on where we may be going however the ultimate way the two cross feels a little less than I expected to happen. Overall, I think this is a tale with some interesting ideas and a story and that makes it worth while but you may be shouting at the lead rather than encouraging him onwards

Superb, a very enjoyable time travel story with a satisfying conclusion. Recommended to anyone who wishes they could go back and do things again.

I love time travel, and this book was no exception. It was a little more character-driven than what I usually lean towards, but I found Ed Richie to be an interesting, albeit at times deeply flawed, character. It was a book that examined not only human nature, but juxtaposed the question of “what if we could change the past” against a hauntingly realistic dystopian near-future. Something that I’m sure was no mistake.

This character-driven science fiction novel was a wonderful foray into examining the relationship between knowledge and choice, and what could happen if given the opportunity to “buy back time”. With brilliantly flawed characters and compellingly realistic situations, this book was a real page turner, and left me completely attached to the characters and cheering for them.

Overall, all I can say is that I found this to be an intelligently put together book that tugged at my heart-strings in unexpected ways, and left me thinking about my own mistakes. I highly recommend this book.

Am not sure why, but from the synopsis I was expecting more of a sci-fi thriller. It's not. The story isn't about the science of time travel or the futuristic dystopian political agendas. It is about character development and how specific moments in our past shape who we are. I loved the bromance between Ed and Digger. After finishing it made me want to call up a few comrades and meet up for a pint.

While I did enjoy the world building (wow... Brexit has a lot to answer for but good to see that Scotland maintained their collective good sense), the dystopian futuristic setting, the subterfuge and the secret spy plots were not particularly riveting and in the end were completely unnecessary.

Recommended for rainy day reading.

3/5

I’d like to give the first half of the book 3 stars and the latter half 3.5. It was slow-going and I wasn’t too invested in the characters until the midway point. From there onwards, I found myself getting attached and wanting to know how it all panned out. Only after I’ve finished the book did I appreciate the characters being flawed even though I did not agree with their choices at times. Lots of politics, love-affairs and self-discoveries(it’s up to you if you prefer that or not, personally I didn’t like Ed’s promiscuous love-life and didn’t give a fig on the politics). I loved the bromance between Ed and Digsby though, what a cherishable friendship! And the characterization was impressive to say the least.

The underlying topic here is that ‘time is paramount’. Quoted in this book from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: ‘Even you are not rich enough, Sir Robert, to buy back your past. No man is.’

However, there was one line that I took offense to, which was: ‘Of course, there’s all those blighted Islamic holes, but there the drink doesn’t flow…’ Here, Islamic countries/communities have been given a sweeping description as ‘blighted holes’. I’d like the author to explain why he did this.

There’s an undercurrent of regret and melancholy in Buying Time. Towards the end there was one scene which almost brought tears to my eyes. If asked to describe the book in one word, I’d choose ‘profound’.

Buying Time is Eric Brown’s latest novel, though this time published under the name of E.M. Brown. Known for his character-focused science fiction stories, Brown has explored many themes during his years as a writer, yet the concept time-travel is one that, I believe, he has not tackled until now. It’s an interesting topic that can be approached in many ways, from big-budget ideas down to very personal stories. As hoped and expected, Brown is firmly in the latter territory here, using his strengths to tell a fascinating story.

Ed Richie lives in the small town of Harrowby Bridge in Yorkshire, spending his time writing scripts for TV shows and radio plays. While not alone, he shares his life with a stream of women with whom, one at a time, he has an inevitably short relationship before they leave him. His oldest friend, Digby Lincoln – Diggers – is also a writer, more successful than Richie, and living not too far from him. They meet regularly to catch up with a few pints in the local pub, which almost always ends up being a good old drinking session. It’s after one of these heavy sessions the night Richie’s latest lady leaves that he collapses, waking up not the following morning, but almost a year earlier in 2016…

Meanwhile in 2030 Ella Shaw is a writer for Scot Free Media in a world vastly different, though not unimaginable, from our own. While reporting and writing on the many different atrocities taking place in the world, she is also fascinated by Ed Richie’s disappearance in 2025, vanishing without a trace. With her own reasons for chasing down a story, she embarks on a fact-finding mission into Richie’s past to see if she can discover just what, exactly, happened to him.

Buying Time is the kind of novel that can really pull you into its narrative. While starting relatively innocuously with a broken relationship, followed by a nice ‘heavy night’ at the pub, it’s a couple of chapters in that it gets very interesting, and opening its door to the main time travel possibilities it promises. For me it’s these early chapters – alternating between Ed Richie as his consciousness gradually moves back through time, and Ella Shaw as she goes about her business in a troubled and oppressive world – that really work for me. In short, it’s the characters that Brown creates to bring his story to life that are the reason the story works as well as it does.

While most of Buying Time is focused on Richie’s life, it’s the aspects of Ella’s world that are perhaps most fascinating. Set in a Britain that has left the EU and the rise of its racist and homophobic government, England is no longer a safe and pleasant place to live. With Scotland and Wales having broken away from England and gained independence, it is harrowing to see such a future. America are perhaps worse than England, now outlawing homosexuality which sees a huge rise in refugees leaving the country. It’s no surprise to see such fictional events given today’s political climate, and while it could be argued that the world presented here is an extreme take on events, they still feel very real, and all too plausible.

Ultimately, Buying Time is a tremendous success. Brown creates compelling characters and tells their story in ways that make them relatable, a true hallmark and strength to his fiction. I was left almost exhausted come the end, having to take some time to really appreciate what he’s done here. Buying Time is not an action packed sci-fi novel, but a more thoughtful character focused affair that is a refreshing take on a well-worn genre trope, a page turner, and a highly enjoyable novel. This is Eric Brown at his best. Very much recommended.

I’m a bit torn about my thoughts on this book. The concept was interesting, and I wanted to keep reading to understand the mystery of Ed’s time travel. But I could not connect to the characters. There was background given to explain why they were as they were, but they were still mainly unlikeable to me. And in the end the time travel explanation felt unfinished. But it was thought provoking, so I’ll go with 3 stars.

I kept picking this up to read and would quickly get frustrated by the plot. The premise of this book was interesting, but in the end it just wasn’t for me so I ended up not finishing.

Ed Richi is a successful TV show scriptwriter. He's feeling....beat down by directors, producers and actors who demand changes to his words... He's lonely after meaningless relationships that never pan out...

Ed goes to bed and...wakes up 9 months in the past - and then the next night - he's 3 years in the past - and so on and so on.

CUT TO - the year 2030 - Ella Show is an investigative journalist researching the disappearance of Ed Richi....and what she finds is not a simple story...

This is an amazing, mind blowing, exciting story that rockets through time and space.

Note: I received an Advance Reading Copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review.

I have always been a sucker for time-travel novels. I guess it’s my love for history, and my closet-wish to observe and understand history as it happened. So when E. M. Brown’s novel Buying Time came up on NetGalley I couldn’t resist.

Buying Time is about Ed Richie, a screenwriter in the UK. He is a womanizer, and can’t even remember all the women who have lived with him these past decades. His latest girlfriend walks out after another big fight and he goes to the pub with his friend, a more successful screenwriter, Digby. When he wakes up the next day things are strange. Stranger than if he’d had a normal hangover. The weather is different. His clothes are not on the floor. And some things in his house have changed. After some confusion he finally figures out he’s jumped a couple of years back in time. He explains this to Digby (a younger Digby), but soon “jumps” again, even further back in time.

In the 2030’s, journalist Ella Croft is taking a month off to work on the biography of screenwriter turned novelist Ed Richie, who disappeared without a trace in 2025. For this biography she has to travel to England (from independent Scotland), a country dangerous for her now that LGBTQ people are openly prosecuted. Through her research she uncovers what happened to Ed Richie, which is something that has an impact on her future and past too.

This book proved to me that my love for time travel stories isn’t always a good thing. I wanted so much more from this story than what I got.

My main issues are twofold. Firstly I have issues with the time travel mechanism of Ed Richie appearing in his own body/mind a couple of years before the now. It starts out as a good concept, and even the methodology behind it I can get into, but in the end Brown doesn’t really carry it forward. It’s like he lost interest (or never had it in the first place) in the time travel aspect, and turned to the emotional aspect of the story.

I also did not like Brown’s description of the future in the parts about Ella. Without giving too much away, Brown is no fan of Trump and UK First, and takes the current political and social climate in mainly the US, UK and Scotland to the extreme. I’m not saying one shouldn’t write about this, or even that this conclusion is so unrealistic to be laughable, but it did not fit in this story. We have a story about time travel, about love, about fixing past mistakes, and as a misplaced bonus we get a dystopian future that really does not influence the story at all. Nothing that happens in this dystopia affects the main characters, nor changes what happens in the story.

What’s left is a story about what you would do if you have a chance to do parts of your life over, and how much past actions and associated guilt will affect your future. Nice, but I expected something more. It therefore gets three out of five stars.

So here I was thinking how nice it is to discover a new science fiction author I like and turns out not, so new, I’ve read Binary System by him before, well by Eric Brown. This is his more character driven work, hence the initials. But new author or otherwise, what a great book. And yes, it is very much a character driven story. The main one of which is an aging tv writer/author who mysteriously disappears and a journalist with a connection to his past who tries to find him. So that’s the mystery aspect. But this is, of course, a science fiction novel and as such the bulk of the story is set in the terrifyingly plausible near future where politics have taken a dark turn for nationalism, neofascist policies, disappearing civil liberties, rampant conservatism and xenophobia…essentially the way it’s going now with the volume turned up for dramatic effect. US being one of the main offenders, but also England, no longer united. Scotland (finally ceding) becomes the liberal safety zone. Again, all very logical. In this book the future is too near, 2030 at the latest, to stun the readers with out of this world technology, it relies on dystopian sociopolitical inventiveness (and how one wishes it was entire an invention) instead and as such is very relevant and compelling of a read. But if you don’t read it for politics, read it for the general plot, it’s absolutely fascinating. The protagonist starts skipping backwards in time to salient moments in his life and it’s a real trip in every meaning of the world, particularly the explanation, which works exceptionally well and comes as something of an ending twist. So it’s a time travel story and a pleasantly reasonable/plausibleish one at that. And the astonishing thing is that, despite the bleakness of its setting, it’s actually a strangely optimistic story, it allows for a possibility of changing one’s past, changing one’s life, of second chances and forgiveness. I loved this one, wanted to read it in one sitting (didn’t manage), wanted to see what’s next, thought about it when I wasn’t reading it, all the things one wishes for in a book. Now if only technology would reach up and meet the fiction and real world do the opposite and veer away from its dystopian course. Until then, there’s Buying Time. Awesome book. Enthusiastically recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

The synopsis reminded me of 'UnHappenings' by Edward Aubry, which I loved. It was incredibly well-narrated and full of the 'science' type of sci-fi time travel, yet never boring or too geeky. Both novels had their main character set to go back into their own timeline, and I was very excited to try 'Buying Time.' Unfortunately, the narrating was very difficult to grow accustomed to and the characters un-sympathetic. Could not finish.

DNF so I will not be rating or reviewing. Thank you for the opportunity to read this title.

Ed Richie is a hack writer, who makes a good living writing for tv shows that he loathes. He drinks too much beer. He has one friend, Digby, who is more successful, and a bit nicer. They both dream of being taken seriously as writers.
He has a routine with women. Invariably, they are tall, willowy and blonde. They meet, he is charming, the sex is great, she moves in. He withdraws, belittles her, and she moves out. Ed isn't a particularly nice guy. It would have been easier to root for Ed had he been a better man.
In Buying Time, we follow Ed, and we also follow Ella in 2030. Ella is writing a book on Ed, who wrote eight prophetic novels before disappearing in 2025. Ella and Ed have a connection in the distant past that made them what they are. Ella also has a problem with love. Most of all, she wants to find what happened to Ed.
The future is a pretty bleak place. The book makes its' own gloomy predictions. Following the populist wave that brought Brexit and Donald Trump, fascism has risen again, and minorities are unwelcome in England and the United States.
Following the demise of his latest relationship, Ed gets drunk at the pub, and wakes up the previous year in a younger version of his body. Before he can work out what is going on, it happens again. What's it all about, and why is it happening? It makes you ask yourself what you would do if you could learn from your own mistakes.
Buying Time is an enjoyable read. I was a little sad that (arguably) the nicest character in the book, an artist, was sacrificed to the plot.

How many people would like to go back in time and live their life over? Now that you are older, you know how things turn out. You know how to do it right. You won't blow up at the wrong time and let someone you love walk out of your life. You won't let someone get in an accident you could have prevented. The idea of time travel is always intriguing from Wells' Time Machine to the present. This book ("Buying Time") is another twist on the concept and here there's no worrying about time paradoxes and changing the universe by leaving a footprint. The story focuses on a small community of British writers, actresses, and screenwriters and on one man in particular who has gone through dozens of live-in relationships over the years. He suddenly finds himself back in various pasts of his and tries to make sense of it and what to do with this strange phenomenon. Alas, as intriguing as the concept is, the novel simply didn't work for me. Perhaps too much dialogue and too little action. Perhaps I didn't like the characters or the narrative voice. But, you can't always like everything on the menu. Maybe it will work for someone else. Many thanks to the publisher for providing a copy.