Review - Only Time Will Tell

Only Time Will Tell by Jeffrey Archer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I have liked Jeffrey Archers' books in the past and this was no different. I love the British history and insight into life during the beginning of World War II.

It's a great story of beginnings and how Harry Clifton rises from the docks to become someone. Who that person he will become will be made known in the next books of the series and I look forward to reading them.

My only complaint about the book was Archer's use of a different font to tell the story from a first person perspective. The book is told from the perspective of several characters and the first few pages of the section is from their perspective alone. Then it builds on the story but from a different angle. I found it an effective way to tell the story but made for difficult reading to use a sans serif font which is difficult to read quickly.

Summary of the book (courtesy Goodreads.com):
The epic tale of Harry Clifton’s life begins in 1920, with the words “I was told that my father was killed in the war.” A dock worker in Bristol, Harry never knew his father, but he learns about life on the docks from his uncle, who expects Harry to join him at the shipyard once he’s left school. But then an unexpected gift wins him a scholarship to an exclusive boys’ school, and his life will never be the same again.

As he enters into adulthood, Harry finally learns how his father really died, but the awful truth only leads him to question, was he even his father? Is he the son of Arthur Clifton, a stevedore who spent his whole life on the docks, or the firstborn son of a scion of West Country society, whose family owns a shipping line?

This introductory novel in Archer’s ambitious series The Clifton Chronicles includes a cast of colorful characters and takes us from the ravages of the Great War to the outbreak of the Second World War, when Harry must decide whether to take up a place at Oxford or join the navy and go to war with Hitler’s Germany. From the docks of working-class England to the bustling streets of 1940 New York City, Only Time Will Tell takes readers on a journey through to future volumes, which will bring to life one hundred years of recent history to reveal a family story that neither the reader nor Harry Clifton himself could ever have imagined.

Now I'm reading Mr. Monk on Patrol by Lee Goldberg.