The Time Traveler's Wife
Jun. 9th, 2007 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keladry_lupinThe library book club meeting was on Tuesday, and we discussed Marley and Me. Cute book, but there isn't anything really special about it. I suggested Galileo's Daughter for next month, and three of my four co-workers present seemed to concur. Then J.T.'s voice cut into the silence and suggested something else. J.T. came by my cubicle later and explained that he's Catholic, and doesn't want to read anything that puts his religion in a bad light. *sigh* I'm annoyed, but I can't argue with that. I wouldn't want anyone to suggest a book that puts my religion in a bad light, even if the facts presented are true. (But I won't go there.) So I set out to look for something else that we could read.
While looking through the most requested titles at http://www.readinggroupguides.com/ I came upon an intriguing title; here's the summary from the web page:
"Audrey Niffenegger's innovative debut, The Time Traveler's Wife, is the story of Clare, a beautiful art student, and Henry, an adventuresome librarian, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-three and Henry thirty-one. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity in his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.
"The Time Traveler's Wife depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare's marriage and their passionate love for each other as the story unfolds from both points of view. Clare and Henry attempt to live normal lives, pursuing familiar goals: steady jobs, good friends, children of their own. All of this is threatened by something they can neither prevent nor control, making their story intensely moving and entirely unforgettable."
It's been a long time since I've read a book in a single day.
I dropped everything and took an early lunch yesterday to get the book from a nearby public library. Then I couldn't put it down. Even as I surfed LJ and e-mail last night, I had one eye on the book. I finished it about half an hour ago and am still trying to process everything.
I appreciated how each section gave a date and Henry's and Clare's ages. It helped me keep everything in order, with all of his jumping through time. Since the first-person point of view shifted so often, it was understandably necessary to have the narrator's name at the head of each section, for clarity. Even so, once in a while, I was confused because I hadn't paid attention to who was speaking, and I thought it was Henry when it was actually Clare.
(I have also realized that one of my SSHG plot bunnies -- the one where Severus goes back in time to save Hermione's life -- wouldn't work. I am not responsible if you get a headache from reading this. Some other fanfic writer, I forget who, had Ron saying that the First Law of Chronodynamics is that you can't go back and change anything that has already happened. This book illustrated that concept superbly, and it's the only way that I can wrap my mind around the concept of time travel. I've seen it handled other ways in books and television -- Star Trek and Quantum Leap especially -- but this is a very clean way of handling it.)
If you haven't read the book, don't click on the cut;
Being a hopeless romantic, I want the stuff I read to be happy at the end, or at least hopeful. No dice here; the happiness they find during their too-short time together is overwhelmed by the tragedy and loneliness that Henry leaves behind. Which is why I'm rather shocked that I loved this book. (Yes, I'm that much of a brat when it comes to what I read.) I was not entirely satisfied with the ending, but after finishing it, I realized that there was no other ending possible. It was as inevitable as all of the other occurrences in the book.
Once Clare told Henry that she'd slept with Gomez before she met Henry in real time (1991), I knew that we'd be seeing him move in once Henry was gone. It was like watching a train wreck, and while I felt bad for Clare, Gomez ... he never got a moment of sympathy from me. Except maybe when he was trying to puzzle things out, before Clare and Henry met in 1991: walking up to Henry when he was out with Ingrid, saying "Clare says hi," and receiving a blank stare in return.
I loved Henry going back and meeting little Henry in the museum. And then on subsequent trips together, where grown-up!Henry would teach his younger self how to steal and pick locks -- how to survive. But it was just as devastating when little Henry learned that grown-up!Henry was him, and that he was alone.
Interesting, though, that I didn't see Henry teaching Alba any of that. He saw it as necessary for his survival. Alva did nick a nightgown off a clothesline as they sat at the beach, but did Henry teach her any of that? He must have; she has to deal with this, just like he does.
Verdict: Devastating and romantic. Devastatingly romantic. Run to the library and give this book a try. It won't suit everyone, but I was pleasantly surprised. I won't be suggesting it for my book club; too many occurrences of profanity, and the sex, while it isn't titillatingly written, is a little too detailed for me to feel comfortable discussing the book with my co-workers.
But I will suggest it to my co-worker Diane, who co-founded the book club with me; we have a little two-person club of our own. I tell her what to read, she reads it while I re-read it, and then we go to lunch and talk about it. She just finished Daddy Long-Legs and is blazing a trail through its sequel Dear Enemy this weekend, so we'll be having lunch this week or next.
While looking through the most requested titles at http://www.readinggroupguides.com/ I came upon an intriguing title; here's the summary from the web page:
"Audrey Niffenegger's innovative debut, The Time Traveler's Wife, is the story of Clare, a beautiful art student, and Henry, an adventuresome librarian, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-three and Henry thirty-one. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity in his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.
"The Time Traveler's Wife depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare's marriage and their passionate love for each other as the story unfolds from both points of view. Clare and Henry attempt to live normal lives, pursuing familiar goals: steady jobs, good friends, children of their own. All of this is threatened by something they can neither prevent nor control, making their story intensely moving and entirely unforgettable."
It's been a long time since I've read a book in a single day.
I dropped everything and took an early lunch yesterday to get the book from a nearby public library. Then I couldn't put it down. Even as I surfed LJ and e-mail last night, I had one eye on the book. I finished it about half an hour ago and am still trying to process everything.
I appreciated how each section gave a date and Henry's and Clare's ages. It helped me keep everything in order, with all of his jumping through time. Since the first-person point of view shifted so often, it was understandably necessary to have the narrator's name at the head of each section, for clarity. Even so, once in a while, I was confused because I hadn't paid attention to who was speaking, and I thought it was Henry when it was actually Clare.
(I have also realized that one of my SSHG plot bunnies -- the one where Severus goes back in time to save Hermione's life -- wouldn't work. I am not responsible if you get a headache from reading this. Some other fanfic writer, I forget who, had Ron saying that the First Law of Chronodynamics is that you can't go back and change anything that has already happened. This book illustrated that concept superbly, and it's the only way that I can wrap my mind around the concept of time travel. I've seen it handled other ways in books and television -- Star Trek and Quantum Leap especially -- but this is a very clean way of handling it.)
If you haven't read the book, don't click on the cut;
Being a hopeless romantic, I want the stuff I read to be happy at the end, or at least hopeful. No dice here; the happiness they find during their too-short time together is overwhelmed by the tragedy and loneliness that Henry leaves behind. Which is why I'm rather shocked that I loved this book. (Yes, I'm that much of a brat when it comes to what I read.) I was not entirely satisfied with the ending, but after finishing it, I realized that there was no other ending possible. It was as inevitable as all of the other occurrences in the book.
Once Clare told Henry that she'd slept with Gomez before she met Henry in real time (1991), I knew that we'd be seeing him move in once Henry was gone. It was like watching a train wreck, and while I felt bad for Clare, Gomez ... he never got a moment of sympathy from me. Except maybe when he was trying to puzzle things out, before Clare and Henry met in 1991: walking up to Henry when he was out with Ingrid, saying "Clare says hi," and receiving a blank stare in return.
I loved Henry going back and meeting little Henry in the museum. And then on subsequent trips together, where grown-up!Henry would teach his younger self how to steal and pick locks -- how to survive. But it was just as devastating when little Henry learned that grown-up!Henry was him, and that he was alone.
Interesting, though, that I didn't see Henry teaching Alba any of that. He saw it as necessary for his survival. Alva did nick a nightgown off a clothesline as they sat at the beach, but did Henry teach her any of that? He must have; she has to deal with this, just like he does.
Verdict: Devastating and romantic. Devastatingly romantic. Run to the library and give this book a try. It won't suit everyone, but I was pleasantly surprised. I won't be suggesting it for my book club; too many occurrences of profanity, and the sex, while it isn't titillatingly written, is a little too detailed for me to feel comfortable discussing the book with my co-workers.
But I will suggest it to my co-worker Diane, who co-founded the book club with me; we have a little two-person club of our own. I tell her what to read, she reads it while I re-read it, and then we go to lunch and talk about it. She just finished Daddy Long-Legs and is blazing a trail through its sequel Dear Enemy this weekend, so we'll be having lunch this week or next.
