Disgruntled commuters everywhere will rejoice over Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time. The novel, based on British journalist Dominic Utton's own experiences, centers on "Dan the man," a husband and new father who moves to the English countryside and commutes, via train, to his job at the Globe newspaper. Fed up with 14 months of chronic delays, Dan, a writer, tracks down the e-mail address of the railroad director, Martin Harbottle, and fires off an e-mail expressing his frustration: "My boss was annoyed with me when I arrived in London; my wife will be annoyed with me when I arrive home again in Oxford. And none of it's my fault. It's your fault."
The goal of each subsequent letter--99 e-mails in all--reflects, in tone and length, the duration of Dan's daily inconveniences due to chronic railroad service delays. Dan believes that if his time has to be wasted, so, too, should the director's, who sporadically writes back to Dan with cautious reserve. What begins as an electronic gripe session spirals into a largely one-sided memoir, where Dan opens up about his life, sharing his tastes in music, his impressions of fellow commuters, scandalous current events and politics at his newspaper, the challenges of his home life (especially his wife's post-natal depression) and the temptations of alcohol and a potential extra-marital entanglement. All of this adds up to form a wholly original--and very entertaining--modern epistolary novel. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines