Backward Glass

Backward Glass by David Lomax tells the tale of a mirror that connects to itself through time.  Basically the “one” chosen for a year can enter the mirror to go ten years up time or down time (this only works in the year of a decade that ends in 7).  Other complications occur to make the use of the mirror more complicated and to allow/disallow actions that allow the mirror travelers to travel much further in time.  The narrator of our tale is Kenny Maxwell from 1977.  He moves into the house that holds the mirror & finds the body of a baby secreted in the wall.  He then joins forces with other mirror travelers to try and figure out how the baby died & prevent that death.  The story expands rapidly from there.  It is quite the adventure tale though I must quibble… the plot point that prevented the characters from figuring things out was one character who was incapable of simply running through an explanation of what had happened to him.  I believe the author was trying to describe the character as crazy and hoping that would serve as an explanation for why he didn’t just say exactly what happened.  This connection didn’t ring true for me because the character had no problem doing other things and so I was left with a really awkward character who caused a lot of grief because he refused to string two coherent sentences together.

I did finish the book in the end and found it interesting despite its rather large character/plot hole.  All in all, it’s probably a book that is best suited to teen readers.