I'm a fan of John Nolte's writings on Breitbart and (perhaps even more so) his tweets, so I had high hopes for his first novel, Borrowed Time. Even still, I was impressed; Borrowed Time is a moving, fascinating, and human story about love and the many things that seem bigger but can never be as important.
Joshua Mason is a man with a secret: he's immortal, having lived for thousands of years, always following up death with a rebirth at the site of a Joshua tree in California. Mason has lived his life alone, knowing the consequences of letting love into your life as one who can't die... until he meets Doreen at a rundown motel in Arizona. Now, he'll learn about love, loss, responsibility, and the dangers inherent in all, while civilization moves forward at an alarming rate.
Nolte says that Borrowed Time is his "first and last" novel, and it reads like that; if you follow him, you know that he poured seemingly every bit of himself into this story, and it's got his views on politics, religion, personal relationships, the importance of the individual, the dangers of modernization and technological advancement, the peace and restorative properties of a trailer park campground, the soul-destroying effects of convenience, and the magic of a dog's love. (There are even a couple of "Man alives" in there for good measure.) That seems like it should make for an unwieldy, unfocused narrative, but Nolte ties everything together beautifully; all of these concepts work in tandem, not only functioning as the observations of a man for whom time is not a concept (until it is), but as the driving forces behind character arcs.
And that's important: Borrowed Time is rooted in character, and the many players in the novel are surprisingly human. Even the villains, all of whom do heinously evil things, are three-dimensional and have compelling stories, while the good guys have all acted shamefully. That's what makes it so relatable: good people are capable of hurting people and evil people are often crafted by circumstances not that dissimilar from ours. It all boils down to choice; sometimes, we'll choose to do good, and other times, we'll choose to do harm. Beyond that, sometimes good is punished and evil is rewarded, and it can be soul-crushing, as it is in real life. And sometimes, we judge people before knowing all the facts, which Nolte tricks us into doing a few times, and it's always a gut-punch. This is some of the best character work I've seen in ages.
Through those characters, Nolte explores his themes. We see Christianity not as an abstract concept being preached from a pulpit but from the way various characters view it, interact with it, and are changed or motivated by it. We see how the increasing and alarmingly fast advancement and digitalization (for lack of an actual word) of society -- what Nolte calls the All At Once -- is eroding individual rights and privacy through Joshua Mason, the epitome of a man who just wants to be left alone, to the point where his very survival depends on it. We see the horrors of our increasing desensitization to evil through the villain and how he's worshiped for all the wrong reasons -- as well as the horrors of the permanent government bureaucracy in how it allows him to operate for its own ends. (I don't want to say who the ultimate villain is because there are a few candidates, and I was surprised myself.)
And fueling all of this is the love story between Joshua and Doreen, the thing that changes him more than the advancing eons ever could. I love how it all comes down to that first flip of her hair, the defining image that will never go away, a moment imprinted on the soul of the man who will never die. Borrowed Time works so well... for a lot of reasons, but fundamentally because, no matter how it worked out, we all have moments like this, moments that are inextricably tied to "her," whoever she may be. Doreen is the constant for a man who spent millennia drifting at sea, and she brings out the best in him, even when he makes huge mistakes. She changes him forever, even when he thinks she can't anymore; a simple hotel manager at a roadside dump makes him view the world, the cosmos, and his never-ending life in ways he never thought possible. While Humphrey Bogart insists that a simple love story doesn't "amount to a hill of beans," Nolte argues that it's everything, and the older I get, the more I think he's right.
Borrowed Time is a marvel, a beautifully human story you'll be glad you experienced, and a perfect way to start a new year of reading. I hope Nolte doesn't stick to his guns and make this his only book, but if he does, he can rest assured he made one that is not only a fantastic read but undeniably his own.