A fictional memoir of a man who was born in Paris in the 1700s and mysteriously stopped aging in his 50s. The story vacillates between different parts of his past and the plot line in the present, in which he runs a successful television studio and looks after his (great-great-great-…) nephew, which is a TV star and a drug addict.

I generally adore Boyne’s work, but this one was really slow to get going for me, and I felt like the bouncing back and forth in the timeline was more obtrusive than anything else. I never really discovered the point of the story, but I’m sure that’s just me being obtuse. I stuck with it, though, and in the end it was a fair enough read. ( )

Corre el año 1758 cuando el joven Matthieu Zéla abandona París acompañado por su hermano menor, Tomas, y por Dominique Sauvet, la única mujer a quien amará de verdad. Además de haber sido testigo de un brutal asesinato, aunque aún no lo sabe, Matthieu lleva consigo otro terrible secreto, una característica insólita y perturbadora: su cuerpo dejará de envejecer. Así, su prolongada existencia nos llevará desde la Revolución francesa hasta el Hollywood de los años veinte, de la Gran Exposición Universal de 1851 a la crisis del 29, y cuando el siglo XX llegue a su fin, la mente de Matthieu albergará un cúmulo de experiencias que harán de él un hombre sabio, aunque no necesariamente más feliz.

Matthieu Zela has been many things. He has been a stable groom, a theatre architect and the millionaire owner of a cable TV channel. He has rubbed shoulders with the stars in Hollywood and picked pockets for a living in Dover. He is also, when this novel starts, 256 years old. Having been born in Paris in 1743, Matthieu flees for England at the age of fifteen after watching his mother die at the hands of his brutish stepfather. With him, he takes his half-brother Tomas. Now, two centuries later, Matthieu is finally taking stock of his life. He has been wildly successful, even if, along the way, he has loved and lost too many people. Among the lost are a whole series of Thomases and Toms, descendants of the first ill-fated Tomas, each of whom seems destined to flail briefly in the world and then, as soon as they have fathered the next generation, to die ignominiously. The current Tommy, a heartthrob actor in a popular TV soap, seems destined to repeat this lamentable pattern, and yet Matthieu is beginning to wonder: what if he stepped in? What if he actually tried to save this Tommy, and take control over the cycle of their intertwined existences?

For the full review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2021/04/18/the-thief-of-time-2000-john-boyne/ ( )

Matthieu Zela, the narrator of this novel, was born in Paris in 1743. By 1999 (the present day for the novel) he is 256 years old, but has not aged noticeably for more than two centuries, and still appears to be a healthy, sprightly man in early middle age.

The novel takes the form of three separate narratives, one recounting Zela’s early experiences, and his departure from Paris as a teenager, and his struggles to establish himself in England. In this he is accompanied by Dominique, a beautiful young Parisienne who has also fled her homeland, escaping unspecified travails back home. The second narrative follows Matthieu in the present day of 1999 (the novel was published in 2000), by which time he has amassed huge wealth and is a significant shareholder in an early participant in satellite television broadcasting. The third narrative flits back and forth between various episodes from the intervening phases of Matthieu’s long eventful life.

Having once succeeded in establish a firm financial basis for his life, Matthieu finds himself taking one several different careers, mostly in arts-based circles, although he tends to be an administrator rather than a creator. At different times we find him managing a new opera house in Rome, working on the fringes of Hollywood in the 1920s and rubbing shoulders with Charlie Chaplin, then later working in the early days of the television explosion if post-war America, labouring under the shadow of the McCarthy witch hunts. With each new window on a phase of his life we find him embarking on a new marriage or extended relationship. He also stands as mentor and unofficial guardian to a succession of ‘nephews’, although by 1999 a string of ‘greats’ is needed to pinpoint exactly how distant the relationship has become.

This may all sound extremely fanciful, but such is the strength of John Boyne’s writing and plotting that once Zela has made his opening statement about his age, the reader goes along with it entirely. Once the reader has encompassed that leap of faith, the rest follows on naturally.

All very engaging and very accomplished. ( )

Het verhaal van een man die maar niet ouder werd, en zijn familie om zich heen ziet komen en gaan.
Al meer dan 250 jaar leeft Matthieu Zela en heeft hij veel zien gebeuren en veranderen op aarde.

verhaal springt heen en weer tussen zijn eerste jaren, de huidige tijd en zijn verleden. idee van het verhaal was goed ( )