Tourmalin's Time Cheques

Written by:
F. Anstey
Narrated by:
LibriVox Volunteers

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
3
Narrator
1
Release Date
January 2015
Duration
3 hours 32 minutes
Summary
Peter Tourmalin is on a sea voyage back home to England from Australia, to return to his fiancee, and he is very bored. The fact that the time difference adds on extra hours to his boredom only makes it worse. So when he gets a unique opportunity to deposit his spare time into an account with the "Anglo-Australian Joint Stock Time Bank, Limited" he doesn't hesitate for long. By opening this account, he doesn't have to spend his spare time right away, but can withdraw it at any future date, when he wants a break. All he has to do is present a time cheque to any clock, and he is immediately brought back aboard ship to spend the time withdrawn.

Sounds perfect? Peter certainly thinks so, when on a dreary November morning in London, a little tired with his exacting fiancee, he presents his first cheque and gets to spend a sunny quarter of an hour aboard ship. However, things get complicated when it turns out the time withdrawn isn't in consecutive installments, but all mixed up, leaving Peter often with no clue of any preliminaries or his relationship with the person he finds himself with. Since he is almost always dropped in the middle of a conversation this can be tricky - especially since his encounters include tete-a-tetes with not one but two beautiful young ladies (never at the same time of course!)... And things only get more and more complicated... (Summary by Anna Simon)

F. Anstey was a pseudonym of Thomas Anstey Guthrie.
Reviews
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Anonymous

A funny sort of a book. Peter, whilst trying to prove he would be true to his fiancé, finds himself wanting to get the hours over with on board ship returning from Australia. ( Mainly because he is tempted to make the acquaintance of one or two of the young ladies on board.) and then he discovers the ship is to add hours on to the day as they adjust to the time changes. More time! He has an offer from a gentleman who manages a bank which will hold on to any hours you may want to deposit and allow you to cash a time cheque any time in the future. And then you would be returned, in this instance, to the ship with its balmy weather and leisure. Although it sounds confusing, Peter decides he will do this. However, when he has returned to England and is in a situation where he chooses to cash one of the cheques, the results are not at all what he expected. He finds himself in the middle of a conversation and, although he tries to answer in a general way, finds himself misunderstanding and being misunderstood. Even though that taught him something, he gets drawn back to using these cheques again and again. Hoping to resolve one matter, he gets into even more difficulties particularly because these “redeemed” times are not sequential! At first I liked the book, seeing the humour in it. But as Peter gets deeper and deeper into a muddle, I felt like I would like to just leave it. I don’t enjoy stories where relationships become confused or people get into difficulties that it seems they won’t get out of. Even though many people like this silly sort of humour, it makes me very uncomfortable.(no, I don’t like Mr.Bean!) But I did finish listening and was glad to be done with it, though the resolution of the problems could have been a bit more equal to the effort in the story. The readers were fine for the book..

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