The Time Traveler’s Wife
Let’s start with the love.
LOVE THIS book like I’ve loved few before. There are some books out there–Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is another one that comes to mind–that are so rich and beautiful I can’t even imagine how that writer’s brain bears any similiary to my writer brain. I mean, I think we both speak the same language, but I’m still working with training wheels here, whereas The Time Traveler’s Wife proves that Audrey Niffenegger has already evolved to wings.
If you don’t know the plot already (in which case you really shouldn’t be reading this, because I have no desire to spoil it for you, so please just stop now, go get the book, read it, come back here and comment), it’s about a man afflicted with the ability–sometimes the curse–to travel backwards and forwards in time, revisiting parts of his life (like having to watch his mother die over and over) and courting his wife over her chronologically-correct lifespan, from the time she is six.
The book is clever, imaginative, funny, mysterious, suspenseful, touching, and let’s just say it: sexy.
Man, is it sexy. Sex delayed, sex denied, sex fulfilled, sex making them late for the family dinner, sex while the person next to them in bed is sleeping, sex as an act of love and devotion and worship and a way to hold on to the present. I’ve read my share of romances, but this one gets one of the top slots as far as I’m concerned.
Okay, but aside from the sex and love and intrigue, this book is just so creative and twisty turny–like the movie Memento in its way–that it had me reading early in the morning, late at night, and all points in between. It’s a long book, so it needed all that time, but it’s also a fast read despite its length. Because as well-written as it is, it’s not hard. Yeah, hard sometimes to organize the time travel in your mind, but not hard in a Moby Dick way, where you feel like skipping whole long sections just to get through the damn thing. (For example, has anyone here actually read the entire John Galt speech at the end of Atlas Shrugged? Admit that after the first twenty pages of it you skimmed.)
I appreciate all those of you who kept bringing up this book on the blog, so that I finally had to sit down and read it. What a reward.
Your turn. Talk book to me.
Technorati Tags: The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger, The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd, Books, Novels, Fiction, Books, Book Reviews, Book Recommendations, Reading Lists, Reading, 50 Book Challenge, Tuesday Book Club, Book Clubs, Memento, Atlas Shrugged
February 6th, 2007 at 7:36 am
I felt the love, too!
I really LOVED this book! But it also made me so sad. I cried when I finished. Actually, cried might not be a strong enough word. My fiance had to hug me while I sobbed!
I was so touched by Henry and Clare’s love, that my heart broke for her when he died. (Oh, I sort of figured out Henry’s death when Clare saw him with her dad and brother in the field. Did anyone else kind of get the feeling that that was Henry’s death?)
I think the thing about this book that upset me the most is that Henry and Clare are stuck, and there is no way they can change the outcome of their story. Also, I feel so bad for Clare. It’s like she spends her whole life waiting… and sometimes I wonder what kind of life that really is.
But I did love this book. I’m actually getting teary eyed thinking about it now. I thought it was so beautiful and so well written.
Now I want to know what everyone else has to say!! =)
February 6th, 2007 at 8:43 am
I’m still rereading TTW,which is only making me fall in love with this book all over again. So beautifully written.
I really was surprised when I first read it that Henry and Clare were finally able to have a child(the earlier attempts were the saddest parts of the book) who could manage her ability abit better,giving Henry hope for the future.
The ending is so perfect,it wraps the plot up but not in a neat little bow. You get enough mystery added in to draw your own conclusions. Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt were planning to turn TTW into a movie(starring themselves)but obviously,fate changed that plan. Hard to imagine who could really do this story justice onscreen.
February 6th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
I read the last fall. It took a month for me to finish the book. Why? I think that each chapter required me to mull over what I had read.
I think this is the author’s allegory about a woman’s relationship with the men in her life. All men are time travellers.
Henry represents all men in Clare’s life. Clare’s love, loyalty, and perseverance are given to the men in her life. She struggles with her mother’s distrust of men. Her mother’s resentment of the relationship her daughters have with their father. Her mother’s struggle with her own upbring. Clare’s distrust of other women.
The men in her life are all time travellers. Appearing, disappearing then reappearing. All ways teasing. Sometimes hidden from those around her. Some playing important roles, others are opportunity lost. Some dangerous. Some understanding, some not. All seeking her love and loyaty. Yet when she needs them they disappear or need her more.
Yet she finds that since men are who they are she can find peace and fullfillment in her art always done away from the men.
Her greatest disappointment are their inablity to provide her life. She despairs at their failure.
Then finally she has a daughter. The daughter who is more like Henry.
We are left with Clare trying to replace once again man who has disappeared. Knowing that that is her fate. Hoping that her daughter will be saved from disappointing her as the men have. All she has left at 80 is the men who time travelled in and out of her life.
February 6th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
WOW, Herb. All I can say is you are WAY deeper than I am. Seriously.
February 6th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Wow, Herb, that is deep, and good too.
Christen, I also thought right away that the scene in the Meadow with the Dad/brother was Henry’s death. I also just loved this book. It’s a great story, beautifully written. It was a read while making breakfast, making dinner, anytime I could grab a few pages book for me. Clare’s feelings of longing and waiting, for Henry, for Alba, and for her mother to die were made so real. Having lost a few babies myself, the writings of Clare’s longings, and fears, the dreams, the heart wrenching disappointments of the miscarriages caused me to cry. I didn’t cry when Henry died because since the scene in the woods, I knew he would die sooner rather than later, and it was just the waiting, the tension that Clare felt wondering exactly when it would happen was what struck me. I wondered at how/why so many people could just accept his story of being a time traveler whenever he told someone-no one seemed to just blow him off as a unresponsible, unreliable wacko. I’d love for there to be a sequel, The Time Traveler’s Daughter, about Alba and what if anything Kendrick can do for her.
February 6th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
I forgot to say how funny the book was in places-particularly the scene when Clare meets Henry’s father and he is saying horrible things to her about him, and why would she ever pick him and she leans across the table and says,”Because he is very, very good in bed.” The things he was saying were so hurtful, that the line seemed even funnier. Loved it.
February 6th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Sorry it just came spilling out.
February 6th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Deborah, what an excellent idea for a sequel! I’ll put in my order for that, too, Ms. Niffenegger.
Deborah (and everyone else), here’s my question about that hunting scene: I still can’t figure out how Henry was there, holding his finger to his lips to Clare, when he was also . . . there.
Need your big brains on that one for me.
February 6th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Can’t help you there. I also can’t figure out how Clare got pregnant after Henry had the vasectomy-it was sort of explained but I didn’t get it.
February 6th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
That one I do get. In fact, I really love the device. The Henry who got the vasectomy was 37, but the Henry who visited Clare and impregnated her was 33, and still wielding the sperm.
February 6th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Deborah and Robin, as far as the hunting scene goes… Henry traveled to that same time on two different occasions. The first time is when he put his finger to his lips to silence Clare (this is when he witnessed his death) and the second time is when he was footless and killed.
Wow! That scene (all three parts) gives me chills. To see your own death… and even Clare comments that she knew something was really wrong.
Herb… wow! That was an excellent book explanation! It also made me look at the book in a whole new way! Thank you for that!!
February 6th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Just as Henry could share time with his others, at the Art Insitute when his young self was 8, he was there when his other was shot. What struck me was as much as he was in and out of his time he could not change things. He knew when he would die. He saw his death but I believe this was before Clare and he were married. So there were many secrets he did not share. Clare did not know what she had seen and Henry stopped her from asking questions.
What I can not remember is were there any scenes where there were more then 2 Henrys present.
I would love to read a sequel. Then what I wrote earlier would be so much BS.
When Clare gets pregnant both Henrys were in bed with her?
February 6th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Yeah, they had to be quiet so they wouldn’t wake older (vasectomy) Henry up.
February 6th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Sure, there were PLENTY of times when there were two Henrys in the same place at the same time — how can you forget the scene where the two post-adolescent Henrys are experimenting with each other sexually and Dad walks in?
February 8th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Barry, obviously you’re right. I don’t know why I had such a hard time accepting that he could be both dead and not dead, when he was also sleeping and at the same time having sex with his wife. Not to mention that scene with both 15-year-old Henrys that you mentioned (the weirdest scene by far).