Momo

Momo is a charming little fairytale that conceals some deep teeth. Somewhere in Italy, a young girl with no other connections takes up residence in an abandoned amphitheater. The neighborhood decides to take care of her, fixing up some of the ruins into a cozy little nook, bringing food, and otherwise letting Momo live her life. She plays with the local children, listens intently and draws out people’s fears and problems, and has special friends Guido Guide, a local historian/fantabulist, and Beppo Streetsweeper, a slightly dotty old man who takes care with even the simplest jobs.

Momo’s nice little community is interrupted by the Men in Gray from the Timesavers Bank. These figures appear to various adults, preaching a doctrine that a second saved is a second for the future, and that everyone must hurry and squeeze every moment, taking no time to appreciate life. Of course these are not time savers, but occult time thieves parasitically feeding off of human time. They make their Faustian bargains and then fade from memory.

Momo is the only one who can see them, and while she convinces her friends, she’s powerless to convince the wider world. A magical tortoise arrives and leads her to Dr Secundus Minutus Hora, a godlike being who bestows time to the world and is the ultimate target of the Gray Men. He gives Momo a gift and a mission, but when she returns to Earth after a year away by others’ perspectives, the world has become modern, speedy, and Momo’s friends have all been captured by the Gray Men. She embarks on a desperate gambit to defeat them and liberate time.

Momo has many individually charming scenes (my favorite is how she resolves a broken friendship, uncovering the bad root cause where both men thought they were taking advantage of the other), loosely linked by a trenchant critique of modernity and false efficiency as opposed to la vida dulce. For me, the most interesting part is how it may have inspired subsequent works. Creepy inhuman bureaucrats stealing time and fearful/jealous of people are a not super-exotic idea, but it’s interesting to compare the Auditors in Terry Pratchett’s Thief of Time, or The Strangers in Dark City.