Madly through time

It muddies the mind... all that toing and froing hither and yon.

Kate Mascarenhas, The Psychology of Time Travel

Time travel must really be confusing because novels about it certainly are. Such is the case with The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas (2018).

That traveling through time might affect a person's mental health is an issue not mentioned in other time-travel stories I've read, and I've read quite a number of them. Yet the psychology of time travel, as the title suggests, comes front and center here. Would-be time travelers are given an extensive psychological test before they are accepted, and Mascarenhas actually reproduces this test, covering 30 pages in the appendix. But if applicants are mentally sound when they begin traveling through time, they almost certainly won't be after going back and forth through time a few times, even meeting (and sometimes having sex with) former or later versions of themselves.

Mascarenhas imagines a world dominated by women, even though this world primarily covers the period from 1967 to 2018. Nearly all of the characters are women and all of the sex, what little there is, is entirely of the lesbian variety. Thus her novel is confusing even without the time travel.

At the center of the plot there is a locked-room mystery, which a time-traveling detective solves. Yet the bigger mysteries have to do with time itself. In one case, for example, both parties in a romantic relationship are present for each other's death. Time travelers check ahead to determine who they have had a successful relationship with before beginning that relationship.

Yes, it is all confusing, but sometimes fun and sometimes just weird.