THE MAP OF TIME by Félix J. Palma, Nick Caistor (Translator), begins with the tale of Andrew, spoiled son of a rich man in Victorian England. Andrew is an adult who’s never had a job, never done anything productive. He falls in love with a prostitute upon viewing her portrait.

To make matters worse, he then has to borrow his servant’s clothes so as not to be noticed when he searches for her where she lives, Whitechapel. You mean Andrew has nothing but finery to wear? You mean he does nothing that might require casual clothing?

Once he finds the prostitute, he pays her fee, and they have sex. (She mentions that she has to get her husband out of the house, but this information doesn’t seem to phase Andrew.) And so it goes every night thereafter. They don’t talk much except when she expresses her concern that Jack the Ripper is lurking around Whitechapel and dissecting all the prostitutes there. And, of course, she was right to be concerned because Jack gets her next.

Although these characters are shallow and the author doesn’t give the reader one good reason to like or even care about them and although the prostitute never gave Andrew one good reason to like or even care about her, he spends the next eight years (yes, EIGHT years) in mourning. When he’s on the very brink of suicide, we get to the reason the book is called THE MAP OF TIME.

This story made me wonder, is this book a joke, or is Palma serious? I wasn’t sure.

Anyhow, that’s just the first story. Other reviews of this book say it contains three stories. That’s because the book is divided into three parts, each a separate (but sort of connected) story. But within each part (story) are stories within stories. This first part contains at least five stories, and at least two of them are spoofs.

For example, in the first part, after Andrew’s story (which we get back to), this part of the book continues with the stories, first, of Andrew’s father and, second, of the man Andrew and his cousin hope can send them back in time. Then that man tells a story, then H.G. Wells enters, and we get his story, then back to Andrew when H.G. Wells gets involved, and so on.

By the end of Part 1, I realized, I think, that Palma really is joking. Andrew’s story was too ridiculous to be serious.

At this point, I read various reader reviews of THE MAP OF TIME. I hoped they would verify my suspicion that Palma isn’t being serious. But I found to my dismay that the other readers were in even more fog about this book than I am. And the crazy thing about it is that they don’t even know they don’t understand.

I continued with Part 2, the story of Claire falling in love with a man from the future who really isn’t from the future. More ridiculousness, especially about everyone not realizing that they’re being spoofed, that it’s really not possible to time travel. This makes it even more obvious that Palma is joking. But other reader reviews didn’t see it that way.

Onto the third part. It seemed excessively wordy. But maybe that’s because I was getting pretty tired of all the nitwits in 19th century England who were so enamored with the possibility of time travel that they believed it was possible.

This is an honest review of a prerelease (but finished) copy of THE MAP OF TIME, which I received from Atria Books/Judith Curr.