Adapted with permission from Octopus' Garden fanzine, Volume 25, Issue #3, March 2016. Review by Tom Aguiar.
Welcome to another
journey through the literary world of The Beatles. On this trip we’re going to
look at Donovan Day’s 2015 book Get Back: imagine…saving John Lennon,
an exciting fiction story that poses the question: what if you could have saved
John Lennon?
So turn off your
mind, relax, and float downstream because the bus is about to leave the
station.
Get Back: imagine…saving John Lennon by
Donovan Day. Park Slope Publishing, Brooklyn, New York.
Imagine that you
have the opportunity to go back in time and save the life of John Lennon. Would
you do it? Would you risk changing history? And would it be for the better? Time
travel is a question that has been discussed by scientists for ages because
changing one thing in history will change another, and so on. And what effect would
it have on the time traveler’s own life? Furthermore, is it even possible?
Donovan Day tackles
these very questions in this, his first book, and does so in a way that answers
many of the questions. It is not the first time that someone has written about
changing the past through time travel. Some books have treated this topic either
from a horrifying point of a view or as a light-hearted comedy. It’s a tricky
challenge to tell the story without slipping into the sci-fi genre but Day is
successful at accomplishing the task.
The story revolves
around Lenny Funk, a 17-year-old spending the summer in New York City with his
grandparents. To make some spending money, Lenny takes his guitar down into the
subway station and sings. He is attacked by some punks who beat him and steal
his guitar. The resulting concussion, along with listening to his grandfather’s
old iPod Nano loaded with songs from the 1960s and 70s while falling asleep, transports
young Lenny back in time to meet one of his heroes, James Taylor.
There are a number
of twists and turns within the story and the first comes when a girl he meets
on the subway named Yoko (named after the
Yoko) listens to the story and tells Lenny that her grandmother, who died
when Yoko was four years old, actually knew The Beatles. Lenny then takes
another solo trip back to the 1960s where, posing as a reporter, he actually
meets the band. It isn’t long before John Lennon suspects the truth about Lenny
and the two become friends.
Lenny then takes
further trips back in time with Yoko and the journey ramps up into an exciting
ride of “what ifs,” as Lenny begins to change events that happened in the past
as we know it. Upon each return trip, Lenny checks to determine whether he was
successful but soon discovers that many of the events of his own history have
also been affected, resulting in changes in his life and of the lives of the
people close to him in 2015.
There are
characters throughout the book with names reminiscent of Beatles songs, but it
is never overdone. In fact, it enhances and adds to the story. You can accept
the names as the coincidences that they are intended to be. Day is a fan of The
Beatles and the other musicians portrayed in the story and he gets their
attitudes and mannerisms “spot on.” Day’s vision of what John would be like in
2015 is intriguing and very believable.
The unintended consequences
of his actions become real and present problems in Lenny’s life, some extremely
painful, and Lenny is soon faced with the serious question: were the changes he
made worth it? Was changing history the right or wrong thing to do? Lenny is
faced with some difficult and heart- breaking decisions as his ability to
return to the past is decreasing and will soon be gone.
There are many
twists and turns that will keep the reader immersed in the story, but the final
twist will surprise you.
Get Back:imagine…saving John Lennon
is Day’s first book but it won’t be his last, as his talent with a challenging
topic like time travel presents an exciting and dramatic story that will
surprise and satisfy.