Timelines of “The Day Tripper”

I have to warn you that James Goodhand’s new novel The Day Tripper has a pretty rough start. At the beginning, manic pixie dream med student Holly is just too perfect to take seriously and her man-child boyfriend Alex isn’t particularly pleasant or relatable either. What I’m saying is, read this one on a delayed train so you have no choice but to power through the rough start, because it’s worth the slog later on. 

The morning after a perfect date with Holly and an awful barfight, 19-year-old Alex wakes up, and it’s 15 years later. Each day, he pops into and out of time, waking up at a different point in his life. This is still recognizably his life, he has the same features and same possessions, but his adult life is clearly a wreck. This could have been a bit stronger if Alex had been a more developed character in the beginning, I felt more curiosity than concern for him as he wakes up in a sad bedsit, in a terrible marriage, in prison, homeless in his car, etc. Each morning, Alex discovers another depressing aspect of his future life, and even though the details are quite sketchy at first, it becomes depressingly clear that he brought this on himself. 

Teen Alex loves a night a out, but aging Alex is a fullblown alcoholic. When he finds himself in different times, sometimes he wakes up almost entirely focused on getting his next drink. Sometimes Alex knows he should call Holly, change his job, tidy his apartment, but he’s just gonna have one drink first… which quickly becomes another… The author expresses the path of least resistance so well, which works here on a scifi level as the timestream rejects changes, and on a moving and relatable level for any reader who’s tried to change their life. 

There aren’t a lot of characters in this novel, instead most of the story comes from seeing the same characters on different paths, at different times.  There’s a scene when Alex is in the hospital with covid, made all the more dramatic because he’s popped in from a pre-pandemic point and has no idea what’s happening, and he recognizes Holly as a masked doctor. This Holly remembers him as an old boyfriend, not a tragic love or a horrible ex, and it’s enough for Alex to see she’s alive in this timeline.  We also see a young boy, Jazz, and all the ways his life could unfold in different timelines.

There’s eventually kind of a vague explanation of the rules, but like the best timey-wimey novels, the author doesn’t waste a lot of story time on explanation. The focus is on Alex, his growth and his choices within his ability.  Alex is eventually able to unlock the sources of his trauma, but there’s no easy time-travel reset here, he doesn’t have the ability to delete the awful events in his life, just to find a way to carry them.

Some first-novel wobbles, but overall, worth reading.  Pairs well with Emma Straub’s This Time Tomorrow, for using time travel to get just a little more good time with a beloved, aging parent, and Mark Laurence’s Limited Wish for time-travel around marrying the right girl and Cambridge.