Hector and the Search for Lost Time: A Novel

Francois Lelord

Jul 2012 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

The delightful third book in the multimillion-copy internationally bestselling series

Being up against the clock was a real problem for so many people, thought Hector. What could he possibly do to help them?

First he tackled happiness. Then he took on love. And now Hector, our endearing young French psychiatrist, confronts the persistent march of time.

His patients lament that there is not enough time in the day. Or they feel that life is passing them by. And in one case, a young boy turns the problem on its head: He's impatient to grow up! Hector himself is increasingly aware of time: He doesn't feel quite so young anymore, and the clock is ticking on his relationship with his beloved Clara.

So as time flies, so does our wise and winsome hero in his latest adventure, traveling around the world to understand the past, the future, and how best to enjoy the present.

Ratings and reviews

Bloggers and Goodreads reviewers regularly debate whether the star rating given to a book should reflect how much that reader actually enjoyed the book or, instead, how well the book accomplished what it set out to do, even though that particular reader did not enjoy it. I didn't really appreciate this distinction until I read Hector Finds Time, written by François Lelord and translated from the French by Carol Gilogley. I did not enjoy this book, which felt to me like a more puerile version of Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World , in that both books are philosophy texts disguised as novels. According to the review snippets at the beginning, Marie Claire described Hector Finds Time as "intelligently naïve"; I'm not so sure about the "intelligent" part, but I certainly agree with "naïve." Take this excerpt which appears on the third page of text, keeping in mind that Hector is supposed to be a psychiatrist: "Over time, Hector had gradually changed the way he worked. At the beginning, he mainly tried to help people to change their outlook. Now, he still did that, of course, but he also helped people to change their lives, to find a new life that would suit them better. Because, to put it another way, if you're a cow, you'll never become a horse, even with a good psychiatrist. It's better to find a nice meadow where people need milk than to try to gallop round a racecourse. And, above all, it's best to avoid entering a bullring, because that's always a disaster. Sabine would not have been happy being compared to a cow, even though cows are actually kind and gentle animals, Hector had always thought, and very good mothers too. It's true that she was also very clever, and sometimes this didn't make her happy, because, as you might already have noticed, sometimes happiness is not knowing everything." Despite the feeling that Lelord was talking to me as if I were in kindergarten, I struggled on to the end, where I found Lelord's explanation as to why he created Hector and his adventures (Hector apparently has searched for happiness and love, in addition to time): "I wanted to tackle psychological and philosophical themes in an entertaining way; to revive the French tradition of philosophical contes, or fables; [and] to both move and enrich my readers[.]" Were I to rate Hector Finds Time on how well Lelord accomplished his first two stated goals, I would give it 4 stars, and if I had known from the start that it was supposed to be a philosophical "fable" (although I suppose the opening words "Once upon a time" probably should have alerted me), I might have enjoyed it more. As it was, though, I found Hector Finds Time amusing but, ironically, a waste of my time. I received a free copy of Hector Finds Time through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

About the author

François Lelord has had a successful career as a psychiatrist in France, where he was born, and in the United States, where he did his postdoc (UCLA). He is the co-author of a number of bestselling self-help books and has consulted for companies interested in reducing stress for their employees. He was on a trip to Hong Kong, questioning his personal and professional life, when the Hector character popped into his mind, and he wrote Hector and the Search for Happiness not quite knowing what kind of book he was writing. The huge success of Hector, first in France, then in Germany and other countries, led him to spend more time writing and traveling, and at the height of the SARS epidemic he found himself in Vietnam, where he practiced psychiatry for a French NGO whose profits go toward heart surgery for poor Vietnamese children. While in Vietnam he also met his future wife, Phuong; today they live in Thailand.

François Lelord’s series of novels about Hector’s journeys includes Hector and the Search for Happiness, Hector and the Secrets of Love, and Hector and the Search for Lost Time.