When a star academic at a London university is murdered at work by a shot fired through a bathroom door, nobody knows who to blame. Nobody knows how this could have happened. Laura Cameron had a husband, two kids, and a bright future ahead of her. Nobody can understand why she would be a target.
Nobody, that is, bar Esther Luck, a fellow philosophy professor who has her own reasons for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If that sounds like the start of a twisty thriller then Time Begins certainly delivers. More interestingly, it also contains deep musings on life, faith and relationships. Esther is a devout atheist brought up in Reform Jewry, with a family she feels increasingly distant from. Never married, but scarred by past affairs, she is left in a state of existential conflict following a cancer diagnosis. Cook allows us to question Esther’s reliability as a narrator (but is she lying deliberately, or because she does not know her true self?).
The truth gradually unfolds, but will guilt or the police investigation be her downfall? Is she passive to her fate, or the architect of her decisions? Some of the philosophy is a tad academic, but Esther isn’t pretentious, just thoughtful. Yet elements did jar, not least her Jewish identity, which seems forced on her in order to serve wider points the author is making about morality and guilt. Cook is not Jewish, although has written that he believes he has Jewish ancestry. There’s certainly no reason a non-Jewish writer cannot write a Jewish character, but Esther’s Jewishness feels overstated, like a costume she is trying on.
She talks about eating “challah bread” rather than just challah, her pompous brother’s religiosity makes him a misogynist, there are repeated references to different communities or emphasis on her sister in law’s Sephardi cooking. Most readers will not notice, but I found it affected Esther’s plausibility as a character.
Moreover the book is strikingly specific; Esther visits the family-friendly Ickworth hotel, rather than a made-up version; she writes at the London Library; her mother’s grave is near to the Amy Winehouse memorial. There’s a subplot about Extinction Rebellion, yet Esther never mentions the climate crisis outside of this.
Time Being offers an unusual story, not always credible but still intriguing. Cook raises several arresting questions, yet to me this hybrid novel feels unresolved.
Time Being, by Jude Cook, is published by Salt
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