Guest article by The Leap Year Gene by Kit McKinley author Shelley Wood
Shelley Wood is the author of Kit McKinley’s leap year gene. Her short stories, creative nonfiction, columns and travel writing have been published in a number of literary magazines and mainstream media, and her work as a medical journalist has won a number of international awards. Her debut novel The Quintland Sistersabout the world’s first identical quintuplets was a No. 1 bestseller in Canada. Shelley was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada. She lives in Kelowna, British Columbia, and works in New York, NY, where she is the editorial director for the Foundation for Cardiovascular Research and editor-in-chief of the award-winning cardiology news site TCTMD.
Published on August 6, 2024, The Leap Year Gene by Kit McKinley traces the first century in the life of a little girl born during World War I who mysteriously ages only one year every four years.
All works of fiction take us out of time—losing hours and days of our own lives to immerse ourselves in those of others. Some of my favorite books are anti-chronological, putting the onus on the reader to piece together the story arc of the novel’s protagonists, reflecting the messiness of memories and emotions. But I especially love books that directly challenge or subvert our notions of normal time as a central theme or plot device. Here are my five favorite time-bending novels.
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
This groundbreaking book was published and adapted into a film in 2004, and a television series recently followed. Yet neither film can match Niffenegger’s ingenious plotting, which manages to connect Clare and Henry across decades while maintaining the unbearable sense of impending tragedy that drives the book. Henry is an involuntary time traveler, travelling forwards and backwards through time, which takes a huge physical toll on him. Clare knows 36-year-old Henry from her childhood (in “real time”), long before she meets a younger version of him, before he travels back in time to meet the girl he will later love as a wife, a situation as outlandish as it is hair-raising. The result is a confusing mess that makes the reading as challenging as it is poignant.
Life after life by Kate Atkinson
Atkinson’s novel raises the “what if” question of her main characters and plot, and then asks it again and again. Time in this novel turns back and then slowly forward, hitting a dead end (literally) before forging a new path over familiar but subtly changed terrain. First, Ursula Todd dies the moment she is born, only to be given several other chances of survival—a doctor arriving sooner, the timely provision of scissors that can sever the umbilical cord that is strangling her. As she grows older, Ursula senses the imminent arrival of death, and for the reader, the repeated sense of tumbling backwards becomes both reassuring and tense. As Ursula’s life is continually remade, chance meets plot, urging us to reconsider the paths not taken or the choices made that could have led to a different ending. Or, as it often turns out, a new beginning.
How to stop the time by Matt Haig
I worked on it for 10 months The Leap Year Gene by Kit McKinleyabout a little girl who ages a year every four years, was published when Haig’s novel about a slowly aging 439-year-old man whose only rule is never to fall in love. I was devastated. Determined not to be overly influenced, I waited until my own novel was finished, sold, and on its way to the printers before delving into this book. To my relief, Haig’s story turned out to be very different from my own, even though it grappled with some similar themes: the fragile nature of bonds, the dangers of being different, the risks we take when we form lasting commitments. But Haig’s book largely eschews medical explanations and follows a consistent and propulsive story arc that makes for a fast, entertaining read. I particularly enjoyed the situational comedy woven into the drama, much of which comes from Tom’s sarcastic view of modern conveniences, his implied distrust of science, and some of his awkward interactions with famous historical figures—from Shakespeare to F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The other valley by Scott Alexander Howard
In a dusty, sunlit lakeside valley that looks eerily like my own (in the sunny Okanagan of British Columbia), Odile Ozanne is a normal teenager with normal teenage problems: Unusually, the valleys to the east and west are identical. One valley is 20 years in the future, the other 20 years in the past. With special permission from the Conseil, petitioners can visit the other valleys anonymously to see loved ones from their past, or those they will never know for decades. Time exists twice in Howard’s narrative, but with temporal shifts that should not be manipulated. On one level, this novel is a coming-of-age story with familiar anguish, hopes and doubts, but for Odile, who happens to glimpse visitors from the future in her valley, there are darker layers. Howard asks: If we had the brief chance to connect with our own past or our future, would it be easier to come to terms with it? Can grief be alleviated?
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Zevin’s novel has been hailed as a timely and imaginative book about work—we so rarely see books about jobs!—and also as a celebration of the power of collaborative creativity, in this case between two best friends who become video game developers and move in and out of each other’s lives over three decades. I’m not a gamer, but I really enjoyed what I learned about game-based storytelling and second chances in this novel. Of all the books on my list, this is the only one without a speculative element or plot element related to disordered time. Instead, by juxtaposing video game “lives” in which you can save your level or die and replay, this book holds up a mirror to the inexorable passage of time in real life: how we tend to repeat our mistakes even as we learn from them. And the human instinct to berate ourselves for our worst moments and decisions and yearn for a repeat. “That’s the gamer in you,” says Sadie Green. “I’m trying to figure out how to get to the next level.”
