Turn Back Time

LoveReading Says

Swiftly-paced and shot-through with stiletto-sharp commentary on pressures for women to remain eternally young (on the outside, at least), Eleanor Tucker’s Turn Back Time is a zestily refreshing read that will surely be relished by readers for whom Bridget Jones ain’t seen nothing yet. 

Entrenched in the pun-packed business of pedalling so-called “pro-aging” products, beauty journalist Erica Pells is no stranger to coming up with this kind of gem: “Exfoliating treatments can also help your body moisturiser penetrate more deeply (just let that sink in).” But, pushing fifty, she’s tiring of writing about the same old, same old, dressed up as something new: “The truth is, writing about beauty products all the time was fine when I was in my twenties and had those ‘pretend’ signs of ageing…But when my whole face started sliding down my neck like a Salvador Dali clock in the desert, I realised I could slather on as many peptides as I liked, but I was never going to look twenty-seven again.” 

While facing up to this truth about her face, Erica’s editor invites her to try the new WULT (Woke Up Like This) treatment, which claims to make users look twenty years younger. So, borne more from a desperate desire to halt the onward march of time than journalistic inquiry, she jumps at the chance. Come day eleven, Erica looks “unrecognisable”, and her observations as a newly-born twenty-something woman are as illuminating as her newly-radiant skin, such as the strangeness of “going from being the invisible woman to the very visible woman, almost overnight. I’d forgotten how much people notice you when you’re young and female. You’re fair game, public property, up for grabs”. At the same time, playing at being twenty years younger is harder than she’d imagined: what to wear? How to talk? Then there’s the fact that her love interest Gabe says he “liked the wear and tear”. He liked the real her. 

In time, after a riding out an amusing emotional rollercoaster of a plot, Erica comes to realise that the most important thing is “having the right people around me. Because when they’re the right people, they don’t care what you look like anyway”.

Joanne Owen

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