Time Enough for Love
by Robert A. Heinlein

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Book Reviews of Time Enough for Love

Book Review: 4 and 1/2 Stars
Summary: 4 Stars

First off, the strengths. As always with Heinlein, my favorite part about the book is the witty dialogue. Just reading the conversation between the characters, even when it does little to advance the plot, is immensely entertaining to me. I realize that there's probably not any "real" people who talk like this... but that doesn't make it any less entertaining. Other strengths include the many entertaining individual adventures, topped with the icing on the cake, Lazarus Long's delicious banter on all things Heinlein (Long's alter-ego) cared to comment on. These comments come to a headway on the two-part Notebooks of Lazarus Long. Some of these quotations, while not the revelatory statements some reviewers have claimed, are nonetheless both witty and worthwhile, and many hit home. Heinlein does tend to preach quite a bit, bordering on too much at times; such as the page-spanning sermons on how to raise children, this coming from a man who himself was childless. But please remember, this IS a work of FICTION. The book is broken up into many individual segments and stories, and because of this you will probably enjoy it more if you read the novel in bits and pieces, rather than large portions at once. My favorite part is the latter section of the book where Lazarus embarks on time travel, it could've easily been a book in itself; and a damn good one too.

Now to the weaknesses. Heinlein's controversial views on sex and moral values, while not as disturbing to me (having read many a Heinlein) as others, are nonetheless unsettling in places, and occasionally detract from the book. I don't have a problem with Lazarus Long knocking up just about every female character he comes into contact with, but I can't say I was indifferent to the book's excessive amounts of incest. Heinlein goes to pains (and I mean pains; chapter-length dialogue segments on the improbability of defects through screened and tested incestous relationships) to seemingly shed a positive light on what many consider the very blackest of sins. I don't know exactly how Heinlein came to take this controversial stance, some of his previous novels (Farnham's Freehold, for instance) hinted at it, but it never came out into the open like this. However he came upon it he stuck with it, as the issue clouds subsequent novels like The Number of the Beast and To Sail Beyond The Sunset. It crops up often in this book; not that unsettling, just a little immature. That's really the only thing in this book you could call a weakness, other than it's tendency to go on a little too long at points (kinda like this review, eh?), many of the individual stories are novella-length. The Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy To Fail should've been left out, it's completely useless to the story and boring. The lengthy Tale of the Twins Who Weren't is long, but entertaining in it's sheer strangeness. The 140+ page Tale of the Adopted Daughter is a very sentimental piece that has undoubtedly brought some to tears.

All in all, an excellent (and weird, in the best sense of the word) book that you should enjoy unless you are put off by the controversial sex/incest issues. But then, if that were the case, you probably wouldn't be looking at reviews of post-Stranger RAH would you? Read and enjoy.

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