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BRIEF DESCRIPTION:  Destiny and time are the themes of this novel. Can we really alter time? Would we - or could we - change any details of our lives if we had the opportunity to go back in time? Michael Grant, who flirts with suicide, is given this opportunity. The ending may be surprising!

 

 

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Book review by Diana Button, from Luxembourg.

"A Twist in Time by Charles Muller begins on a daring and raucous note with the protagonist Michael talking about his fascination with porn videos—a scene which the author has achieved with the precision pace and timing you would expect of a well-rehearsed comedy actor. The book continues to entertain with sizzling scenes of sexual encounter and prose so packed full of innuendoes and subtleties that you are tempted to read pages again to pick them all up. You certainly feel you are in a master’s hands as Muller cleverly and convincingly builds up sexual tension between the protagonist and the manipulative Samantha and goes on to thrill the reader with detailed descriptions of some unusual (and often embarrassing) sexual encounters. Gullible, likeable Michael wins the readers hearts even more when he lets naughty Samantha take full advantage of his naivety and lack of sexual experience. It is at this point in the book you realise that Charles Muller is not merely describing sex for the sake of entertaining. There is clearly a much deeper message in A Twist in Time:- society has not learned a mature way of dealing with human sexuality, turning it too hastily into an act of shame, disgrace and guilt. Sex, which is our human nature, one of our fundamental needs and methods of expressing feelings of love and joy, must not be ignored, closeted and twisted into something nasty and dirty.

The story weaves some interesting comments and ponderings on life, time, religion and the inter-connection of things as it moves on its pleasant-paced and humorous path in time. A touching story of sex which is not just tantalising and exciting, but realistic, down-to-earth, non-pretentious, heart-felt and believable. Though the ending of the book may have been a twist too far, the rest turns and twists in some very amusing and poignant ways.".—Diana Button, Luxembourg

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Review of A Twist in Time by Pat Miller, editor of The Jedburgh Courier:

A novel from Mine Host at the Kenmore Bank Hotel, Jedburgh.

Charles Humphrey Muller came to Scotland from South Africa where he was a professor of English Literature, with the intention of buying a small hotel and concentrating on his writing. He now has several books under his belt, both fiction and non-fiction, and even runs his own Internet publishing company, Diadem Books.

  “A Twist in Time” is the sad story of Michael Grant, a twisted individual, married to the wrong woman and who hates his life. He’s depressed and suicidal. He wonders all the while how his life might have turned out if he had the chance to live it all over again and to make different choices.

He is given that chance and we see him apparently making the same mistakes with the same girl all over again – but does he really? All through the 60’s we follow the re-run of Michael’s life and eventually discover that some surprising changes have indeed been made.

This book is meticulously written, nothing is left out and while the plot seems straight enough, the time-twists can be slightly disconcerting for the reader. It is well worth the effort however. Although there are some explicit and powerful sex-scenes, the narrative mainly proceeds at a measured pace. It’s perhaps not the book you’d give great-auntie Millie for her birthday, but nevertheless good adult fiction with an unpredictable, slightly unbelievable ending.

This work is meaty and sustaining and could in no way be termed lightweight or frivolous. It’s a good, square meal and two veg which will give the reader much food for thought and no little enjoyment.

  “A Twist in Time” by Charles Humphrey Muller is published by the Writers Club Press and is available through the Internet.

                                                            Pat Miller, The Jedburgh Courier   No2 Sept 2000  

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Book review by Lisa Ammerman, from Englewood, Florida, 
4 February, 2001
Unputdownable!
Once I started A TWIST IN TIME I couldn't put it down! For one thing, it's very sensual, yet frank and open. The characters are all interesting and full of life - I was drawn right in to the story, with much sympathy for Michael, who had to put up with the strange British accents and weather - for a start! And I kept smiling and nodding to myself over several scenes, sometimes ironic and humorous, which thankfully lighten the darker mood of loneliness and pain Michael struggles to surmount.

When I got to the end of the book I had to go back and read again the last two chapters, because I wasn't sure what version was a "replay" and what actually happened. Was that the author's intent?

It's an interesting concept that no matter what we do we can't alter (except in little twists) the end result of our ultimate destiny. I suppose if we don't reach it we'll have to carry on in another realm or reincarnation!

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Book review by Emelia Hardy, a reader from New Hampshire, USA 
Brilliant!

I really admire this author! There are not many people that can tell it the way it is without holding back anything, and I have to say that Humphrey Muller (Charles Muller) is indeed one darn good writer!

To be able to bring you right into the book with him, leaving you with wanting to know more, making you hungry enough that you can't put the book down!

When I watch a movie or read a book I have a way of figuring out how the story is going to unfold. It takes all the excitement out of it. But I want to tell you that Charles Muller pulled the rug right out from under me on this book!  Sure there were parts that I figured out, but not that many. I enjoyed this book so much.

The author made his characters come alive and with such passion! It certainly had an affect on me and more than once!

At the beginning of this story the author speaks of suicide and boy does he explain it well! I've been there I know, but what bothers me is the fact that he can explain it so well. Is this book fiction or fact? It seems so no one could explain it that well without feeling it inside!

I loved his characters though Michael could have used some cheering up!…but the author got the point across!

I couldn't believe the amount of times the author took my breath away. The ending was brilliant! Very well written.

What a pleasure it was to read this book—‘A Twist in Time’ by right should be a best seller. If I could give it a higher score, I would!

I told you people that I would be back and here I am. Get this book, read it, you won't be sorry!

 Thank you Charles for such a wonderful book!

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A Twist in Time – a compelling read.

I’ve just read – A Twist in Time novel by Humphrey Muller.  From the first page of this zany, tantalizing, evocative novel it grips your imagination so completely –that it’s hard NOT to push forward relentlessly to the next thrilling chapter. So much so that I, for one, am going to read it again. Which proves it to be a very good read – because there aren’t many Authors I can say that about. Charles Humphrey Muller pierces your heart with Michael, so much so, with emotion running riot right through to the strange ending.

Have you read this novel yet?,  if not – I suggest you do,  and then with honesty see if you can say it didn’t affect you immensely!   Were you like myself, reading it at times with eyes moist and yet compelled to keep going, even though difficult to focus, trying to read through tear filled eyes?

It’s a tremendous read and written with so many of a young man’s feelings and fears.

Beth Richards. 8/8/2009.

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HERE  IS   THE  SYNOPSIS  OF   A  TWIST  IN  TIME:             

It’s 1999. Grant and his wife Mary run a Guest House in Keswick.

However, Michael Grant, 55, is pretty messed up. From the opening chapters it’s immediately evident he’s disillusioned with life and desperately unhappy. He hates bowing and scraping to guests - especially the Americans. His depression is so acute he takes refuge in voyeurism, relieving his boredom by masturbating while watching sex videos. A typical case of male menopause, you might say. His sterile marriage and the close surveillance of his pious wife Mary, and her repeated warnings, makes his life a living hell. If only he could go back, he thinks, to a time before he met his wife. He flirts with the idea of suicide. By the end of the second chapter he writes himself off by walking in front of a truck.

 

It’s 1966. Aberystwyth, in West Wales (what was Cardiganshire).

Michael Grant wakes from a dream of the future. He doesn’t realise he’s gone back thirty-three years, and that he might have the opportunity to change his future. But, in fact, he’s in the grip of the past, in the grip of the present and in the grip of his own nature. Character is fate, as Thomas Hardy said. Given the chance, would we (or could we) really change our fate - or our destiny?

The important thing, of course, is not to fall into the same trap this time - of becoming involved with and marrying Mary, a neurotic and asthmatic student at the same university. (Michael is a postgraduate student, writing a dissertation on the novels of Graham Greene.) He is desperately lonely and, yes, he falls into all the old traps, in spite of a repeated sense of deja vu. Having met and got involved with Mary, a member of a strict religious sect, he falls in lust with Samantha, a magnificent redhead engaged to be married to a postdoctoral researcher. The girl he really falls in love with is Jane, a cute American he meets while on holiday in Switzerland and Berlin. An excursion into East Berlin with Jane (behind the wall) becomes the happiest day of his life. When he returns to Aberystwyth, Samantha is married. When he learns that Jane is about to be married and receives an invitation to her wedding in New Hampshire, he realises he has lost the one great love of his life. All that’s left to him, now, is Mary - who claims to be pregnant with his child.

He doesn’t love Mary, and he doesn’t believe the child is his. He has good reason, in fact, to believe Mary is the victim of abuse - by a respected elder of her sect. The ‘arranging brethren’ of the sect visit him, urging him to ‘do the right thing.’ This sense of responsibility, together with the pity he feels for the pathetic, thin, stick-insect of a girl, is like a compulsion, coercing him into a loveless marriage.

But he doesn’t marry her. On that hopeless, dark, sad day of the Aberfan disaster he falls asleep on the beach at low tide. The incoming tide ends the rerun of 1966.

 In the singularity: no date, no time:

The next chapter (the penultimate chapter) is Michael’s memory of a dream, once again (like the first two chapters) penned in the first person, like a diary. He recalls being in a strange place - the singularity - where time stands still. The bizarre dialogue with his alter ego, his younger self - elicits the point of view that one cannot change one’s destiny, after all. And yet, his younger self recalls, there were two, very small acts where he might have deviated from the original 1966 run. But they were surely too small, too insignificant, to have had any material effect on the future. Indeed, the older Michael confirms they had no effect at all. Then Michael half-wakes from his dream, finding himself once again next to his wife and in 1999.

Epilogue: 1999, but where?

But just who is his wife? The Epilogue is the short conclusion to the story, once again set in 1999. Is the ending the one the reader  would expect? Has Michael’s life altered in any significant way? In other words, would a stitch in time have any real life-changing repercussions? Could a stitch in time actually save 1999