Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Once Upon a Timepiece by Starr Wood


I have a weakness for timepieces - I treasure the two gold pocket watches that belonged to my grandfather and a smaller gold watch that belonged to my grandmother. My mother must have had ten or more wristwatches in her jewelry box when she died and I still have them although I don't think any of them still tick. I have a clock in every room of my house. When I visit a historic home I am always on the lookout for an antique mantel clock or grandfather's clock to admire.

So the debut collection of twelve short stories by Starr Wood, Once Upon a Timepiece, intrigued me. Each story finds the timepiece - "a 1946 Breitling Chronomat made from rose-colored gold" - in the possession of someone new. The reader is carried along as each month the watch passes from wrist to drawer and from pocket to pawnshop over the span of a year. The telling of how that person - each a stranger to the others - came to have the timepiece is what makes this book such fun to read.

"Well, I didn't see that coming!" is what I found myself thinking often in the reading of these stories. Each one has a twist at the end and it was amusing to see how Mr. Wood gets his main character - the timepiece - into the life of someone new.

Mr. Wood is a journalist and his prose is crisp and uncluttered. His characters are drawn with just enough telling details - the woman with the gorgeous red hair, the obsessively tidy accountant, the self-righteous newspaper editor - as to make them quite distinguishable from each other. 

I am glad I was able to devote some 'time' in my reading schedule to these tales. There really is a 1946 Breitling Chronomat, a watch designed during World War II for aviators. Perhaps Mr. Wood's traveling timepiece looked something like the one below. If so, I would be happy to add it to my collection, but I certainly wouldn't like to let it go!

6 comments:

  1. Sounds like a wonderful read, Belle, and is on my list.
    My husband was once a clock designer. We still have some of the prototypes he brought home, and I'm thinking we should put some out after having read this. Hmmm...

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    1. How fascinating, Penny. Absolutely display those examples of your husband's creativity. I don't have my grandparents' timepieces on display, but I do sometimes get them out and just sit with them. I love the feel of the gold cases. Warm. Mementos of a gentler time.

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  2. An interesting idea for a book, and it sounds like it was well done. My husband has a thing for clocks (as does his mother) and we have several nice ones thanks to them. I appreciate the ones we have, but don't feel a need to add to the collection :).

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    1. Kathy, I have a fondness for surprise endings and also for stories of people connected by a particular object. I recently watched the 1964 movie "The Yellow Rolls Royce" about the various owners of a certain Rolls. It was quite amusing in a '60s sort of way!

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    2. Have you ever seen the movie The Red Violin (I think that's the name)? It follows the history of, you guessed it, a violin, in China.

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    3. Kathy, I have not seen the movie but I am intrigued. I will see if my 'video' store has a copy. Thanks for the recommendation.

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