Aaron, Hanna and the Game of Time

Aaron believes in a world full of possibilities, including the rare possibility that a relationship can occasionally last for all the right reasons. His muse, the person he falls in love with instantly, is Hanna, a Swiss-born natural blonde with a skepticism that is earned from growing up with divorced parents and a protective brother who shows no emotion. Hanna is street smart, practical, and more than a little wary when Aaron uses words like love and forever, but she decides to try to "win the game" with him because of Aaron's confident insistence that it's possible.

From their first meeting in Amsterdam to their years together in Northern California, Aaron and Hanna try, in their own way, to preserve what they have, even as some acts of devotion look like distancing, and good intentions sometimes create confusion or mistrust. Whether love can survive misunderstanding, silence, and the pressures that accumulate over years is of course a question, and a decision, every couple hoping to win against time must answer for themselves.

Amsterdam to Northern California and Back Again

The novel's geography matters as much as its timeline: Aaron and Hanna meet in Amsterdam, but build their life together in Northern California. It's a transatlantic arc that mirrors Hanna's own internal struggle of trying to adapt to Aaron's world while trying to remember hers, even as Aaron tries to offer her everything he thinks will make her happy.

Marks has described the book's central question—whether love can actually win the game of life—as a theme that surfaces in some of his other creative work, including his song "Sky High."

Marks has said the title's arithmetic was meant literally: what is left once time has taken hearts and minds on its inevitable path forward? Less, or more than when it began?

One of Four Gary Marks Books Released in 2026

Love +/- Time is one of four books Marks released in 2026, alongside Touching Eros, Emily's Game, and Timshel's Choice, his most concentrated run of new fiction since he completed The Dance and the Diamond Sky in 1988.

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