How to Stop Time

Matt Haig's novel How to Stop Time follows Tom Hazard, a man born in sixteenth-century France who suffers from a rare condition called anageria, which slows his aging so drastically that he appears to live for centuries. Because of this, Tom has survived roughly four hundred years, working at various points as a musician in Shakespeare's London, a sailor on Captain Cook's voyages, and a spy during the Cold War. He now teaches history at a London secondary school, where his firsthand memories of the past collide awkwardly with his present-day attempts at an ordinary life. The narrative moves between Tom's current struggles and episodes from his long past, structured around the central tension of whether immortality is a gift or a burden. A key framework in the book is the Albatross Society, a secret organization led by the menacing Hendrich that supposedly protects people with anageria. Its first rule is that members must never fall in love, since forming lasting attachments to ordinary humans only leads to grief. Tom's obedience to this rule is tested when he meets a woman named Camille, forcing him to question the Society's control over his existence. The novel also explores how Tom's condition makes him an outsider in every era, watching loved ones age and die while he remains fixed in time. Haig uses Tom's historical vantage point to reflect on memory, loss, and the human desire to escape mortality, ultimately suggesting that a meaningful life depends not on how much time one has but on how fully it is lived.