How Does Time Travel Work In 'The Shining Girls'?

In 'The Shining Girls', time travel isn't some fancy sci-fi gadget—it's a brutal, unpredictable force. The killer Harper Curtis stumbles upon a mysterious house that acts as a time portal, letting him jump between decades while hunting his 'shining girls'. The house doesn't care about rules; doors open to random years, and Harper can't control where or when he ends up. What's eerie is how the house seems to choose him, almost like it's alive. The girls he targets glow with potential—artists, scientists, rebels—and their brilliance makes them visible across time. The novel plays with causality in chilling ways; wounds from the future appear in the past, and victims remember attacks that haven't happened yet. It's less about mechanics and more about horror—time is a predator here, not a tool.

The time travel in 'The Shining Girls' is one of the most unsettling versions I've encountered. Unlike other stories with clear rules, this operates on nightmare logic. Harper's house is the anchor—a decaying, sentient structure that exists outside time. It grants him access to different eras, but with cruel randomness. One door might lead to 1931, another to the 1990s, with no pattern or warning. The house demands blood; Harper must kill the 'shining girls' to keep his access, creating a grotesque symbiotic relationship.

What fascinates me is the ripple effect. Kirby, the survivor, notices anomalies—newspaper clippings change, evidence vanishes, and her scars shift. The house edits reality around its victims. Lauren Beukes smartly avoids technobabble; the horror comes from the instability. Harper isn't a mastermind—he's a pawn. The house uses him to disrupt these women's lives across decades, emphasizing how violence echoes through time. The lack of control is key. Harper can't choose his targets; the house highlights them with an unnatural glow, making their potential visible across years. It's less time travel and more a haunting across generations.

For fans of this concept, I'd suggest 'The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle'—another twisty narrative where time manipulation serves mystery rather than sci-fi.

Beukes crafts time travel as a visceral, almost biological process in 'The Shining Girls'. The house isn't a machine—it breathes, decays, and hungers. Harper doesn't 'travel' so much as get swallowed by it. Doors creak open to reveal Chicago in different eras, but the transitions aren't smooth. He arrives disoriented, often mid-step, with the house's rot clinging to his clothes. The girls shine because the house makes them visible—their unrealized futures pulse like beacons. Kirby survives her attack but inherits a terrifying awareness; she sees time's seams fraying around her.

What stands out is the asymmetry. Harper jumps chaotically, but the girls exist linearly. This creates haunting overlaps—Kirby finds clues Harper left in her childhood, years before he actually plants them. The house doesn't care about paradoxes; it thrives on dissonance. Beukes uses this to explore how trauma transcends time. A victim in the 1940s might recall Harper's face from a 1970s newspaper, creating dread without explanation. The mechanics are deliberately vague, reinforcing that Harper's just another victim—the real monster is the house itself.

If you liked this, try 'Version Control' by Dexter Palmer. It plays with similar themes of fractured timelines, though through a tech lens.