Killing Time: A Novel [Paperback]

With Hank Schacte’s first novel, the amnesiac opus Killing Time, you have to appreciate that the question of memory is in the Western cultural spotlight right now. Certainly this slippery theme is much-discussed in print recently, but it’s really in fin-de-siecle film that memory’s architecture is being considered. Schacte, an American on Saturna, may or may not have seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Minority Report, The Bourne Identity, A.I., The Manchurian Candidate or that first Matrix flick where ‘déjà vu’ means they’ve changed something. But his publisher’s rep did say of Killing Time, “We’re comparing it to Memento.”
While that might be a very fine movie, the closest filmic equivalent to Schacte’s book I’m aware of is the lovingly handcrafted time-machine thriller, Primer. This novel shares with Primer an evocation of events sliding quietly out of control, chronologically and otherwise, and that is a compliment indeed.
The question of whether Schacte’s novel is film-esque is not strictly relevant (although the author has apparently written for the screen before; and Killing Time is like all movies in its lack of commas.) What Schacte does with these questions of recall and retention ought to work first as literature, obviously, and occasionally does. But much of his intelligent book isn’t too memorable. You don’t want to blame this on its protagonist Richard, who got head-smacked in a car crash he doesn’t recall, and doesn’t begin forming new memories until some eight months later. You’re inclined to forgive the vagueness of this extremely unreliable narrator, and forgive the animal desire he feels daily for Quebecois Cindy, “in pale silk camisole that glows aquamarine in the moonlight running on lithe legs . . . ” Richard’s Venus, la Cindy, is girlfriend to his own brother Paul, who has cared for him (poor stunned Richard) in the eight months since the horrific accident; all three have been living together in what appears to be an East Vancouver-Gulf Islands axis; and so a melodramatic stage is set. You want to read to the final tumult.
On the other hand, the brain-injured repetitiveness and impulsivity on view in Killing Time’s 150 pages-as narrated by a protagonist whose macabre amnesia doesn’t seem to faze or frighten him at all, and whose hoboesque wanderings form much of the novel’s centre-can get a little, um, hard to follow. It’s not even too clear, at the end, whether Richard, memory’s low-key casualty, actually gets the girl or not:

“Making love” he said. “Or was it fucking?”

“Oh Richard don’t do this don’t do this to me. Don’t start remembering now” [Cindy] said starting the car to drive blindly ahead through tears . . .

Killing Time has a rough-hewn feel to it, and while not being especially readable, does smuggle many gigantic ideas into its quietly-poetic plot. Hank Schacte deserves credit for his textual accomplishment here, and should get double credit if he doesn’t try to turn this novel into a slow, talky movie, as many 21st-century BC writers would otherwise do.
Lyle Neff (Books in Canada)

A man loses his memory in a car accident. He has no recollection of the months leading up to the accident, but he has also lost the ability to form new memories. Living with his brother and his brother’s girlfriend, Richard slowly regains his short–term memory, and begins to piece together his life before the accident.

What Richard, and the reader, gradually come to understand is the fact that the relationship between himself and the couple is more complicated than is readily apparent. A Momento between covers, Killing Time is a literary mystery, where the reader is just a step or two ahead of the main character in unravelling the clues to his identity, past, and possible future.