Book Review: Retro by Jessica M. Goldstein
Failed actress Ash has finally hit rock bottom. She’s drifted apart from her friends, she barely has a relationship with her family, and now she’s been passive-romantically ‘let go’ from her lacklustre admin job. She’s so far away from the theatrical life she once dreamt of having and she can’t envisage any kind of future that appeals to her. That is until she happens upon a job advertisement on Instagram posted by Retro, a recreational time travel agency who are hiring agents to escort the ultra-wealthy on trips into the past. For a woman who has nothing – no hopes, no house, no career, no personal ties – it’s a golden opportunity to start afresh.
Energised by her new role, Ash throws herself into Retro life, leading bachelorette parties in the Old West, birthday parties at Woodstock, and a situationship with a hard-drinking private detective in 1939. Finally, Ash has friends and a purpose and a job she’s actually good at. She even begins a tentative relationship with a fellow Retro employee, whose mere presence gives her the kind of girlish butterflies Ash hasn’t felt in years. But as time goes on, and glitches begin to show in Retro’s perfect facade, it becomes clear that the company’s shadowy founder, Ro Temple, has terrifying designs for the future of time travel – and for the part Ash herself can play in it.
Reading the opening chapters of Jessica M. Goldstein’s debut novel, I knew that this was going to be a perfect book for millennial readers. Like Ash, we’re old enough to remember the blissful, carefree days before technology and social media ruled our lives, but still young enough to be willingly reliant on it all the same. So to be delivered a story like Retro – which is set against a speculative backdrop of time travel tourism and simultaneously plays into our collective yearning for a more analogue world – feels like a genuine balm for the soul. Retro is at once expansive yet intimate; brilliantly clever but deeply relatable. It is a thrilling jaunt into a past that felt so much simpler, and a cautionary exploration of a future that, even on a good news day, still skews towards bleak.
Yet, at its heart, this is still a story of one woman fumbling her way through life and figuring out what she really wants before the choice is taken away from her. Ash might spend her time whizzing across America through time and space on Retro’s time-bending equivalent of a bullet train, but Goldstein’s story remains a surprisingly grounded one, rooted in the very real experience of many women – that feeling of being left behind when everyone else seems to have achieved their dreams, or at least have them within their grasp. There’s something so reassuring, comforting even, about seeing your thoughts and feelings reflected back at you from the pages, even when those pages go to some dark places (quite literally in some cases).
The one downside of this being such an intricate exploration of nostalgia, morality and progress is the book’s slow pace. Whilst the introspective nature of the story really puts readers in Ash’s shoes, prompting us to ponder our own ethics and life values, it’s jarring to find yourself nearing the book’s end and realise all the breathless action was left until the final chapters. And then to get to that gut-punch of an end and be left with a cliffhanger… it’s difficult not to feel a little cheated. But the beauty of Goldstein’s novel remains in its originality and sense of yearning, not to mention the author’s ability to spin a time travel tale that feels as if it was made for the big screen. It evokes the same feeling as Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time – one of wonder and horror and hope all tied up together. Now if Goldstein could be persuaded to write a sequel, it’ll be the quickest pre-order of my life!
★★★★
Retro was published by Michael Joseph on 25 June 2026
