Time's Mouth: A Novel

by Edan Lepucki

Overview

Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize

From New York Times bestselling author Edan Lepucki comes an enthralling saga about family secrets that grow more powerful with time, set against the magical, dangerous landscape of California

Ursa possesses a very special gift. She can travel through memory and revisit her past. After she flees her hometown for the counterculture glory of 1950’s California, the intoxicating potential of her unique ability eventually draws a group of women into her orbit and into a ramshackle Victorian mansion in the woods outside Santa Cruz. Yet Ursa’s powers come with a cost. Soon this cultish community of sisterhood takes an ominous turn, prompting her son, Ray, and his pregnant lover, Cherry, to flee their home for Los Angeles and reinvent themselves far from Ursa’s insidious influence. But escaping their past won’t be so easy. A series of mysterious events forces Cherry to abandon their baby, leaving Ray to raise Opal alone.

Now a teenager and still heartbroken over the abandonment of the mother she never knew, Opal must journey into her own past to reveal the generations of secrets that gave rise to the shimmering source of her family's painful legacy.

From the forests of Santa Cruz, to the 1980s glam of Melrose Avenue to a solitary mansion among the oil derricks off La Cienega Boulevard, and brimming with the double-edged capacity of memory to both heal and harm, Time’s Mouth is a poignant and evocative excavation of the bonds that bind families together.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781640095724
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	08/01/2023
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	316,012
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

EDAN LEPUCKI is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels California and Woman No. 17, as well as the editor of Mothers Before: Stories and Portraits of Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them. Her nonfiction has been published in The New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Esquire Magazine, and The Cut, among other publications. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.

Editorial Reviews

06/19/2023

Lepucki’s enjoyable if convoluted latest (after Woman No. 17) follows the exploits of a time-traveling woman and her family’s intergenerational curse. Sharon is born in 1938, and at 16 flees her family in Connecticut after discovering a fantastical ability to revisit episodes from her past (she describes it as being “here and there at the same time”), which leads her to believe that her father, who died three years earlier, was abusive. She hitchhikes to California and reinvents herself as Ursa. In the 1970s, Ursa is a single mother raising her son, Ray, at a female-centered Santa Cruz commune, along with other “Mamas” who are drawn to Ursa’s mystic time-traveling capabilities. Meanwhile, Ray grows increasingly frustrated at being one of the only males allowed on the property. Eventually, he runs (as his mother once did), and ends up in Southern California with his pregnant girlfriend Cherry. After Ursa’s grandchild is born, the runaway cycle repeats. By the end, Lepucki reveals the details behind the trauma Ursa faced as a teen. Extensive asides on Wilhelm Reich’s orgone theories and his energy accumulator are bizarre and distracting, though Lepucki deploys plenty of evocative similes (for Ray, guilt feels like “a coat of paint covering his body, drying him into a kind of cast”). Thanks to Lepucki’s fine prose, this intrigues more than it frustrates. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

06/01/2023

In Lepucki's (Woman No. 17) latest novel, three generations of women, all with the remarkable ability to travel back to previous times in their lives, struggle to escape the legacies of trauma inflicted upon them by their mothers. Ursa is the spiritual leader of a commune of women in the Santa Cruz Mountains who cultivate cannabis and bask in the energy generated by her monthly "transports" from the eastern wing of their remote cabin. Cold and narcissistic, Ursa is obsessed with harnessing her "gift," to the extent that she ignores everything else, even her son Ray. Ursa is oblivious to Ray's growing closeness with Cherry, an orphan whose paternity throws Ursa into a rage. When Cherry becomes pregnant with Opal, she and Ray leave the Mamas but cannot escape the grip of the women's terrible powers. As a teen, Opal travels to her own past to learn why her mother abandoned her and Ray. Despite the supernatural element and Ursa's sociopathic tendencies, the plot lags, and the characters often do not progress beyond two dimensions. VERDICT Those who enjoy reading about California counterculture and cults may be intrigued.—Christine Perkins

Library Journal

★ 2023-05-23
Communes and counterculture, dysfunctional families, astral travel...welcome to California in the second half of the 20th century.

The first time Sharon experiences her ability to revisit scenes from her past, she’s 16. “How could she see herself? She could feel her own body, back in the bedroom, but she was also here in the backyard, without a form. She was a floating consciousness. This other self, the one on the grass—Sharon recognized herself. Three years in the past. She was thirteen. And, still, sixteen. Here and there at the same time. This was the night of her father’s funeral. The best day of her life.” Lepucki’s latest novel is, in a word, a trip, narrated by Time itself. It begins with a literal trip, as Sharon runs away from the horrors of her childhood in Connecticut and heads for a different life with a new name: Ursa. Ursa’s adventures in California unfurl through the late 1950s and ’60s, and by the 1970s, she’s a single mother raising her son at a woodland women’s commune/marijuana farm, with her mysterious psychic abilities making her a cult leader. Her son, Ray, does not have a happy childhood, however, nor does his close companion, Cherry. The running away continues—first Ray and Cherry run to LA, and then Cherry leaves Ray to raise their baby, Opal, alone—and so does the time travel, as another character turns out to have Ursa’s gift. The novel follows the characters into the 1990s, by which time the terrible thing in Ursa’s past that made her celebrate her father’s death has impacted three generations of parenting, and the resentment and secrecy that have festered over the decades come to a head. Lepucki is known for combining domestic realism with a magical worldview and/or SF–adjacent elements (here, there’s an isolation chamber in a box in the garage inspired by Reich’s Orgone Accumulator) and for evoking California in all its real, surreal, and unreal glory. She does it again.

This emotionally intense, wildly imaginative novel is both down-to-earth and out-to-lunch. One of a kind.

Kirkus Reviews

Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
Time, A Best Book of the Summer
Salon, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year
Science Friday, A Best Book of the Year
Literary Hub, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year
The Millions, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year
Library Journal, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year

"Tactile and immediate . . . Lepucki remains attuned to the deep yearning and loss associated with parenthood and childhood." —Cree LaFavour, The New York Times Book Review

Wildly imaginative . . . An emotionally visceral, page-turning saga exploring motherhood, abandonment, self-invention, intergenerational trauma, cult worship, somatic therapy, and, most of all, the poignancy that even reconjured memories are forever lost once the present vanishes." —Jessica Zack, San Francisco Chronicle

"A time-travel story that feels shatteringly real . . . It's both gripping and moving, and promises at least one burst of cathartic tears." —Lily Meyer, NPR

"An immersive, unique novel." —The Boston Globe

"It is a story of motherhood and disjunction, of self-making and villainy, of a remarkable power depicted and deployed on an intimate scale . . . The novel is a page-turning exploration of the intergenerational trauma of this very specific family with its unique gift, and the ways each new generation tries to heal itself . . . One of California’s most anticipated books of the summer." —Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times

"Investigating the past on a metaphysical scale, Lepucki calls into question the gifts inherited from previous generations, the durability of family attachments, and the love lost or found between children and mothers." —Lou Fancher, East Bay Express

"Edan Lepucki's novel is an intergenerational tale about an inherited gifts that begins to look like a curse." —Emma Alpern, New York Magazine

"Rich and riveting." —People, Book of the Week

"An Edan Lepucki novel—any Edan Lepucki novel—is a treat. But this one involves a Californian woman who can time-travel through her own memories . . . I was sold on 'time-travel,' how about you?" —Lauren Puckett-Pope, Elle

"An intensely imagined work that takes a number of risks with genre, character, and emotional tone." —Anita Felicelli, Alta

"Spanning decades and tracking the evolution of, and recovery from, intergenerational trauma, Time’s Mouth is a dreamy, heartfelt tearjerker." —Arianna Rebolini, Bustle

"This moving portrait of three generations of a California family comes with a twist that literally kicks it into another dimension: Some characters can time-travel to earlier parts of their lives. Slipping these uncanny episodes seamlessly into a vivid portrait of life at a woodland women’s commune in the ’70s, and in a single-parent household in the ’90s, Lepucki traces the consequences of damaged mothering but gifts her characters—and readers—a deeply satisfying emotional finale." —Oprah Daily

"A gripping intergenerational family saga with a slight fantastical bent, this asks big questions about motherhood, time, and how we can ever appreciate right now while it’s still here." —theSkimm

"A beautifully original piece of fiction . . . California in the second half of the 20th century stands out as a distinctive character, the perfect backdrop for a truly far-out tale. Quite distinct from other books on the shelf, a fabulous new release." —Page Berger, Darien Neighbors Magazine

"How does Time’s Mouth succeed? First, Lepucki’s prose is brisk and flows as fluidly as time itself. Second, she allows us to have ambivalent feelings about the time travel and describes those tunneling episodes with dispassion. Third, even as Time extends the narrative to Y2K and as the potential for some sort of generational confrontation seems pending, Lepucki keeps her intentions guarded." —Ron Slate, On the Seawall

"Time's Mouth is a compelling story of family, loyalty, hurt and healing . . . [H]er narrative is tightly constructed, her language is lovely, and the tensions are controlled and palpable. This is a shimmering novel, tackling some tricky questions about loneliness and self, power and love, memory and, of course, time." —Sarah Rachel Egelman, Bookreporter.com

"For fans of Matrix and The Girls, Time’s Mouth is a mesmerizing and confident novel about power, desire, and the depths of our bonds." —Literary Hub, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year

"Lepucki displays a real talent for giving readers a new perspective—whether on the passions of motherhood in particular, or on the nature of parenthood in general—and emphasizes the power of real love (and a bit of New Agey therapy) to heal." —Arlene McKanic, BookPage

"Lepucki’s latest novel is, in a word, a trip, narrated by Time itself . . . Lepucki is known for combining domestic realism with a magical worldview and/or SF–adjacent elements (here, there’s an isolation chamber in a box in the garage inspired by Reich’s Orgone Accumulator) and for evoking California in all its real, surreal, and unreal glory. She does it again. This emotionally intense, wildly imaginative novel is both down-to-earth and out-to-lunch. One of a kind." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Lepucki's prose is tactile, sensual, nimble—precise and full of pleasures. Time’s Mouth is an engrossing novel and a sprawling work of imagination." —Charles Yu, National Book Award-winning author of Interior Chinatown

"Stunningly original and deeply human, Time’s Mouth is one of those books that’s impossible not to love. It’s a little magical, a little emotional, but most of all a meditation on loss and longing and the search for meaning in an inexplicable universe. I’m an Edan Lepucki fan, and this is her best book yet.” —Janelle Brown, author of I’ll Be You

"Edan Lepucki's new novel is an astonishing achievement. This sweeping intergenerational saga has California cults and communes, mystics and astral travel, but it's also a profound and moving exploration of family—the way it both wounds and heals us, the ways we both long for and run from its embrace. Written in crystalline prose that is as wise as it is witty, Time’s Mouth left me breathless with admiration." —Dan Chaon, author of Sleepwalk

“Edan Lepucki's engrossing third novel tackles so much about the physical and psychic terrain of California, with its hippies and hipsters, its oil derricks and redwoods. It’s a beautiful book about a much-mythologized place, but its heart lives much closer to home: in the real and complex bond between parent and child.” —Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind

From the Publisher