Old wine in a new bottle.
As trite as the expression may sound, it’s really apt for Jeffrey Archer’s writing. I haven’t read all of his books. In fact, a cursory look at that list tells me I have only read a little more than half of them. Despite that, I am now able to pinpoint several idiosyncrasies that he repeatedly turns to. Whether it be the names of characters, certain narrative techniques or some plot elements, it’s no secret he likes to reuse things. In a way, that is quite bad (and I certainly wouldn’t tolerate it in a few other artists’ work) but I tend to forgive that when it comes to Archer. You know why?
Because it’s written just so damn well.
Only Time Will Tell is the first installment in The Clifton Chronicles which – as the blurb at the back informs us – is Jeffrey Archer’s most ambitious work in four decades as an international bestselling author. The Chronicles tell the epic tale of Harry Cliffton, a poor British boy born in 1919. In this part, we deal with Harry’s childhood, his education, his parentage etc. We also meet a sprawling cast of characters, from Maisie Clifton, Harry’s mum, to Old Jack Tar, a recluse, to Tom Bradshaw, an enigmatic sailor. And since this book is only the first out of a scheduled five part series, it doesn’t have a self-contained plot. Not all threads are resolved, not all questions are answered and the ending is a cliffhanger.
That ending will be a beef for many people (including me), mainly because it’s such a stark deviation from anything Archer has done. When someone is known for a particular type of work (and Archer certainly doesn’t shy away from that in the rest of the book) but completely breaks away from that in such a jarring fashion, then murmurs of disagreement are bound to arise. I’m not just unhappy with the cliffhanger because it’s atypical Archer fare, but also because of the way it is handled. An ideal cliffhanger should leave you hyperventilating, wanting to know what’s next. It shouldn’t feel like someone wrote an entire sequence but only chose to publish half of it. That feeling of dissatisfaction is omnipresent in the climax, which is why the book has a sour aftertaste.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. We shouldn’t be talking about the ending first up. There are 386 pages before we get to that climax and, in my opinion, they don’t disappoint. Make no mistake, this book is packed with stuff. Something or the other is always happening, characters are constantly popping in & out of the picture, things that happened earlier are referred to in such an offhand way that you’ll constantly have to keep up, lest you be lost in the superhighway of information that this book operates in.
The plot has drama, mystery, romance, comedy, action and more. Most of the book is a joy to read and some segments are actually brilliant. A scene in the first act that’s set around a character buying a watch may just be my favorite sequence from any book I’ve read recently. Archer brings us to genuinely care for many characters and as a result, the not-infrequent parts where the characters are in peril are heart-pounding stuff.
The book uses a first-person narrative style, with the “first-person” changing at regular intervals. The time period of the different narrators’ segments frequently overlap, and hence we often get to see one particular event retold from different perspectives – with each retelling revealing the event in a new light. Archer also used this neat (but not revolutionary) trick in As The Crow Flies and the similarities with that novel do not end there. To point out examples would mean entering spoiler-territory, but believe me when I say that Archer’s “going-back-to-the-same-well” thing gets quite nauseating here.
While on the topic of things that don’t work in this novel, let’s talk about the chief antagonist: Hugo Barrington. He sticks out like a sore thumb because of how one-dimensional he is. While Archer fleshes out almost every other character such that they come across as believable human beings, he fails to do so with Hugo, and that is the book’s biggest bungle. A villainous individual who opposes the protagonist and is generally evil is something we as readers love to hate. But a character who quickly stops resembling a real person and instead seems to exist only so as to create more hurdles for the plot to move forward? That is just lazy storytelling.
However, these flaws don’t derail the novel to the point that it becomes unreadable. Only Time Will Tell is a fast, engaging story well-told. The time you spend reading it will certainly be enjoyable, even if the book itself is just popcorn stuff. Recommended.
(3.5/5)
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