handful of timeA Handful of Time, by Kit Pearson • Puffin Books, 1987

Summer homes might just be the most time travel friendly places on earth. Unmoored from the everyday plodding passage of time, they exist in an odd summer world, where long days and idleness conspire against chronological time and generations blur together in a sea of hand-me-down clothes and dogeared paperbacks. (My thesaurus lists the following among its synonyms for summer: consume time, fritter away time, have leisure, idle away time, pass the time, sit on one’s hands, kill time, while away the time.)

In Kit Pearson’s novel, Patricia is already a bit unmoored by the dissolution of her parents’ marriage when she is sent to stay at her cousins’ summer home in Alberta. The house has been in the family for generations, but Patricia’s mother sold her rights to the house to her younger sister, and hasn’t been to the house in years. This summer is Patricia’s introduction to the house. A pale, chubby, and overly-dressed counterpoint to her freer, wilder cousins, Patricia spends most of her time alone.

One day, in an old cottage under repair, Patricia finds an watch that once belonged to her grandmother. When she winds it, she finds herself back in time, observing her own mother’s childhood at the lake house some 35 years before. But just she begins to know her mother at her own age and see the lake house through her eyes, the watch breaks, leaving Patrica stranded again in her own present.

This is a wonderful story, beautifully told. Pearson manages to deftly capture the small injustices of family life, and the ways that we often don’t know those to whom we are the closest. Patricia’s discovery of the watch perfectly captures the experience of coming — or at least trying — to understand one’s family history, while simultaneously coming to know oneself.

Readers as young as ten who are trying to figure out their place in the world and within the context of their families will enjoy this book. Fans of time travel stories such as Charlotte Sometimes especially will enjoy how Patricia’s accidental discovery of the watch shapes her summer and transforms how she interacts with her contemporary world.