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Entanglement by Bryan Walpert  {Reviewed by STELLA} A time traveller, a writer, a lover, a brother, a father. Bryan Walpert’s novel Entanglement, a novel of three parts — intersecting yet separate, entangled yet often also like a long open straight road, both precise and complex — has layers upon layers expanding and collapsing in on itself. It’s cerebral without being boring, pokes fun at itself while still having integrity, and has an emotional core which is richly textured. The three parts are distinct: 'Lake Lyndon Writer Retreat 2019', 'Time Traveller' and 'Sydney 2011'. We move between these stories seamlessly, picking up from where we left off in the previous related episode. Walpert gives each their own flavour. Lake Lyndon has the protagonist answerable to writers’ prompts — the retreat is the perfect time to work on the unwritten novel — to explore mechanisms for approaching his themes. These are often evocative passages, playing to the rules but pulling together story-telling and something of what might be the narrator’s own emotional memory landscape, melding dreamlike episodes with possibly factual encounters. 'Time Traveller' is instantly fascinating. Drawn in by the emotive title you are instinctively required to ask —  Who is this time traveller and where have they travelled from and where are they going? And why is it necessary? And then, as an afterthought, is it possible? It’s cold, it’s snowing, the bus is missed, the bus breaks down. The man is lost even in this familiar landscape. He knows he has to be somewhere but he can’t quite piece it together. Is this a willing deception? Walpert asks us to consider memory and trauma — regret lies at the heart of this devastated, desperate individual. 'Sydney 2011' is the love story that runs throughout, the meeting of two minds attracted to each other in a flurry of time philosophy chat and pillow talk. Anise is intelligent and independent. The narrator is drawn to her intellectually, emotionally and physically. Neither expected a romance. Each on their own trajectory, but, as with many paths, theirs intersect and become entangled in unexpected ways. This leads to marriage, a child and moving countries for reasons the couple may regret. Cleverly conceived, these chapters defy time order, sometimes moving backwards in time, so we, the reader, know more than we should and at other times the tale twists in on itself as the protagonist attempts to control the narrative, to keep us from the truth. This is his view, his story to tell. Pushing through the plot is the story of Daniel, the twin — a story that the brother wishes to change. Can time be altered? The writer’s residency at the Centre of Time in Sydney has him attempting to understand the physics of time, and the novel is rich with conversations with various department academics as they explain the science and philosophy of time. As the novel moves along, the time traveller is increasingly desperate to get to an event in the past but is waylaid by being mugged, getting a concussion, and being apprehended by a psychiatrist. We leave him standing on the ice of a frozen lake — or do we? The husband loses his wife and child and there is a heartbreaking awareness of his mistakes, now and then (in 1976). He is trapped in these moments. His guilt has clung to him, shaping the person he is and the decision he makes thirty years on. It is as if time is collapsing in on him and he knows of only one way out. But is it possible? Walpert writes with surety and restless energy. Like the structure of the novel, the thematic concerns are also layered, expressed with self-deprecating humour, earnest intent, and passages of lyrical beauty — as much a novel as a critique of writing itself. Clever and intriguing. >>Shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction in the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.