I just finished reading This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, and I enjoyed it immensely. The raves about it are entirely justified, and like the best books out there, this one has inspired a lot of emotions and soul-searching.
The story is told through a mix of styles, prose and epistolary. The two focal characters are on opposing sides, with seemingly conflicting belief systems, in a battle through time and timelines to influence outcomes that further their worlds’ goals. One of the characters leaves a letter–via arcane means, a delight to read about–for her opponent as a taunt and challenge, but also an invitation.
That sparks an ongoing conversation between the agents that beautifully, delicately, threateningly grows into so much more: a connection, a rivalry, then an exchange of philosophy and purpose and the secret things that live inside their hearts–things that they’ve shared only with each other. They become hopelessly, delightfully, dangerously entangled.
“So I go. I travel farther and faster and harder than most, and I read, and I write, and I love cities. To be alone in a crowd, apart and belonging, to have distance between what I see and what I am.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War
Like Red, I’ve lived a life where I’ve been separated from others, an oddity with specific skills that help me pay attention to tiny but important things many others miss or ignore. Like Blue, I have a need for a connection and a love for multi-layered meanings in carefully crafted paragraphs. [Things are not this simple in the book or in real life, I should note.]
I have a long history of using correspondence to connect with people who might understand me more fully than the ones I encounter in everyday life. I have a difficult time forging deep and meaningful relationships in face-to-face situations; I’m both too intense and too withdrawn, made of glass that lets people see inside without actually interacting with those internal workings. A lover once said that I was “secretive” and they meant as “a person who hides their true self and thoughts away.” It baffled me, because I’m transparent, as I said.
But they were right in one way: because they didn’t try to crack through the glass to get to the treasures behind it–the promises made by appearance but only accessible with work–they didn’t get to know the inner me. They just saw that it was there and untouchable by them.
I’m not easy to know. I am, but only if you share proportionately, and people often don’t. And then they wonder why the Me they know is there isn’t just presented to them.
Letters? They’re an equal trade.
You write, and when you first start a correspondence, you’re feeling out the other person, this unknown who might have left you enough clues to guess what might tickle their fancy enough to respond back. You dribble out a small bit of who you are with the ink that helps you compose those [hopefully] clever sentences, wooing the person on the other end to do the same, maybe even more bravely than you did. It’s a tease, a challenge, an invitation. It’s intimate.
Not every potential correspondent will accept your dance of words, and that’s fine; just like any interaction, you don’t want to waste the good stuff on an unworthy partner. But when the connection sparks, when the writer sees what you’re offering in the carefully outstretched hand filled with paragraphs hinting at the possible delights to come…that’s magic.
“There’s a kind of time travel in letters, isn’t there? I imagine you laughing at my small joke; I imagine you groaning; I imagine you throwing my words away. Do I have you still? Do I address empty air and the flies that will eat this carcass? You could leave me for five years, you could return never—and I have to write the rest of this not knowing.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War
In my time writing to strangers that became friends or foils or occasionally educational experiences, I learned how to search different spaces where potential conversation partners gathered and winnow out the ones that would never give me what I was looking for, narrowing my choices down to the best of the bunch before I would launch a probing missive their way. I went from the back of magazines, pre-widely-accessible-internet, to newsgroups, then eventually places like Craigslist. In the process I gained a few unshakable friendships, a few enemies, and one connection that felt very much like the beginning letters from Red and Blue, and just as tumultuous. I had another that I met in person but the bulk of our connection was built from letter-writing, where we were free to talk about much more intimate topics than we ever felt comfortable with face-to-face.
The last correspondence I had became a real-life dalliance that broke my heart with the push and pull dynamics involved; I’d finally met my match with someone who glass-walled me, but with no invitation to break through. It was all “look, but don’t even try to touch.” Whereas I’m emotionally available if someone would actually make the effort, they were all rocky shore and no way to access the lighthouse. Which…fair enough, they are who they are, and I knew enough of their story to guess why that was the case. But it cured me of reaching out in that way, until I met my current partner — someone brave enough to make that effort and crack my protective glass.
Which brings me to my current story.
What I’m writing now is very much an ode to breaking through those invisible barriers, reaching out through anonymous means [in this case, a version of Craigslist] to connect with a stranger with which to become entangled. In the process, the characters reveal their secrets and learn what it means to be fully present for each other…and better humans. In Tryst’s case, she very much is like me: someone looking for meaning through reaching out to the unknown. Even though she’s got people who love her, she’s closed off from them in many ways. It’s a love letter to those times, to the hurting and isolated version of myself and others like me who want something bigger than casual connections. No one else could write it, so I’m writing it for myself, so I can feel seen.
Stories that make me feel seen are rare. This Is How You Lose the Time War did that, in the most poetic and delightful way possible.
