the ask@AAR: What do we–currently–think about dual timeline novels?
This week, my book club met to discuss The Lost Apothecary. Almost all found it deeply annoying. The past timeline—murder, poison, betrayal—had some narrative pull. But the present-day plot never got off the ground. Caroline, the modern lead, didn’t read like a person so much as a placeholder. Her husband cheats, she flies to London, finds a mysterious vial in the mud, and is somehow admitted to a graduate program at Cambridge despite having no real qualifications. We were also asked to believe she stumbled upon a major feminist historical discovery in a pocket of central London that property developers have mysteriously overlooked. None of it made sense. And beyond the implausibility, Caroline existed to echo the book’s point more than to embody a story. She wasn’t there to make choices. She was there to affirm a message—men betray, women rediscover themselves—and to marvel at the past while delivering her lines about empowerment on cue.
Dual timeline novels are everywhere right now, and it’s not hard to see why. The structure promises resonance: a secret from the past casts a long shadow, and a modern woman uncovers the truth and, ideally, something about herself. The past is usually intense and atmospheric. The present is designed to reflect or resolve. The goal, always, is to give the reader the feeling that history isn’t over—that it’s alive, unfinished, personal. But that promise falls flat when only one half of the novel feels inhabited.
When they work, these stories are a gift. Kate Morton, in The Secret Keeper, Homecoming, and, my favorite, The Forgotten Garden shifts between eras with confidence and purpose. Her historical settings are immersive and her modern storylines holds their own. Fiona Davis has written some excellent ones. This same book club loved The Lions of Fifth Avenue, where the lives of a librarian in 1913 and her granddaughter in 1993, both connected by the New York Public Library, are well explored. Lauren Willig’s The Summer Country takes place in Barbados, alternating between 1854 and 1812, and both timelines are equally fascinating.
Not all dual timeline novels achieve this balance. In The Golden Hour by Beatriz Williams, there is just too much going on and the stories are too dissimilar. In Ariel Lawhon’s I Was Anastasia, the chronology of the two timelines is baffling and just doesn’t work.
My issue is not, thus, with the structure itself. It’s with how often it’s used to compensate for thin material. Writers reach for a dual timeline when they don’t have enough plot for one era or when they want the historical storyline to feel “relevant” without having to do the work to make it immediate. Symmetry is used in place of depth and the the novel reads as a mirror rather than a window.
If the either timeline wouldn’t stand on its own, it doesn’t belong in the book. If the modern heroine is just there to marvel at the bravery of her ancestors, she’s not a protagonist—she’s a device. And if her only role is to confirm the lesson we were already being taught, the novel stops being a story and becomes a sermon. (I’ve yet to read a dual timeline novel where the present is better rendered than the past.)
I’d love to know what you think. Which dual timeline novels have stayed with you, and which ones made you wish the author had picked a lane? What makes one work across eras—and what makes you skim? Tell me which you love, which you loathe, and whether this structure still feels worth it.
The post the ask@AAR: What do we–currently–think about dual timeline novels? appeared first on All About Romance.
