Parvulescu's book is one of the more unique reads on time travel that I have met, not because the opening scenes of a future traveler's arrival in late 19th century Romania isn't gripping, but that the book pretty consistently thwarted my expectations every moment following it. The beauty of Life Begins on Friday isn't in the time travel story, it isn't even in the whodunnit mystery which loosely wends its way through the narrative.

No, it's about, I think, letting ourselves settle into the community we find ourselves in, about meeting people and appreciating their complexities and needs, about navigating where we are and thereby understanding who we are. I don't say this as a spoiler for the book but as a guide to reading it.

Life Begins takes its time, sweeps us across and through a good dozen characters at length, takes us through the thinking and priorities of the Bucharest of a century ago, their absurd comedies and easy tragedies, about the propriety of leaving cards of calling, of messages not delivered, of designing the reported news of the day, even of assassination plots and national symbolic scandals, of characters struggling and living richly, and of the treacheries of love. And each character along the way is slowly unveiled, is offered to us in intimacy.

Oh, and there is the time travel part, too, I guess. Almost an afterthought for all of us.