What happens when you look back and realize that sometimes it’s the brief moments that mean everything? In other words, “Two minutes of just being present in my own life. I would need to remember what that felt like.” A few seconds of silence under a lamppost when you realized that solitude was everything and marriage could be chaos. When you watch your wife swim at a pool party and recognize "the chill of understanding that you have become invisible in your own life.” When someone says something unforgivable, and so you take another moment to respond to a text. What if you urged your daughter to wear a dress to fit in with gender norms, and then recognized the betrayal?
In TWO MINUTES TO EVERYTHING, H.W. Cumming has created a work of literary fiction about love lost. The novel explores the relationship between love and the gender norms that convince men that provisions, security, and control are more important than presence—that giving up your dreams matters if it means you’ll have a solid financial future. It challenges the myth that girls should wear dresses and that communication is easy. To tell the story, he weaves together small moments of presence and contrasting versions of love: a father who doesn’t speak but helps his son get ready for a game, a grandmother who understands that "love was not a quiet thing."
TWO MINUTES TO EVERYTHING is a thoughtful, somewhat poetic book. Words are shorter during times of contemplation or finality, longer and more exciting when passion stirs (like with the performance of the band Stylistic Audacity). There’s personification: "What I remember is lying in the dark with my eyes open, listening to the house breathe around me." Sometimes the text can be vague, as though narrator Daniel cannot express his feelings and so describes them as something instead. His sentences repeat as though he were trying to gather his thoughts, and he intellectualizes his emotions at times when even just physical feelings would resonate more deeply.
Yet the story comes together to share a profoundly emotional journey of love, loss, shyness, and a longing to be seen that leaves Daniel questioning his life choices. For readers interested in the endless journey of trying to perfect one's approach to love, TWO MINUTES TO EVERYTHING should suffice.
H.W. Cumming's TWO MINUTES TO EVERYTHING is for any reader who's ever felt invisible in their own life and needed a book to share that feeling. This novel will haunt you with the struggle to get love right.
~ Nicci Attfield for IndieReader