At the age of forty-four, Hippolyte Sicher has it all—all, that is, except Mado, the woman he stood up at the altar twenty years ago and has never seen since. His successful career as a neuropsychiatrist at a major Paris hospital leaves him plenty of time to pursue his hobbies: classic rock and herbal remedies. Surrounded by those who love him—his friends, his secretary—he retains only a shadowy memory of the traumatic day that marked an irreparable rupture with the self of his youth. Irreparable, that is, until he runs into his former fiancée’s mother after giving a lecture. The encounter reveals a strange and marvelous ability: Hippolyte can travel back in time. By preparing his mental susceptibility with music, he is able to confirm the experience. With practice and application it comes more easily, but all the while he remains a passenger in his own younger self, capable of observation but not action. As he is once more drawn into the love story of Hippo and Mado, two young people so evidently destined for each other, he begins to wonder how he ever could have left her. He begins to wonder, too—as the mysterious and tragic wedding day draws near—whether the past has to stay the way it is.

Like Audrey Niffenegger in The Time Traveler’s Wife, Philippe Ségur conjures with questions of fate, identity, innocence and experience, youth and age, and love everlasting in his quirky and fluent novel.