Niffenegger, Audrey - The Time Traveler's Wife

[oyceter]

Henry DeTamble is born with some sort of genetic defect that causes him to travel involuntarily through time, but he is in love with (and loved by) Clare, whose life proceeds one way through time like most people's. It's a very interesting love story in which we get to see not only the falling-in-love period so often focused on by romance novels, but also what comes later through the years.

While the dialogue at first felt a little clunky, I settled into the book easily and was extremely caught up in the narrative. The narrative is, given the topic, fairly linear -- I liked how we mostly start through Clare's experiences, chronologically, with small bits of the future interspersed as Future!Henry returns from a rendevouz with Past!Clare. It also makes for very interesting dramatic reveals. Mostly I am in awe of how the author managed to juggle the timelines, as Clare meets Future!Henry when she's just a child, while Henry meets Clare in real time, without any past knowledge of her. The structure of the book itself makes it fascinating.

The problem I had with the book was that I never quite understood why Henry and Clare were in love. Clare as a child was obviously enamoured of older Henry (it skirted around my squick buttons, but it was a little close there), and when she finally meets Henry in real life, Henry speaks of her sort of molding him into her memory of future!Henry. While Henry, on the other hand, seems to be in love with Clare at first simply because they are fated to be in love. Later on in his life, when he starts traveling back to visit child!Clare, he sort of molds her into his memory of future!Clare. So there is a sense of fate in the relationship that I'm not sure if I buy. Maybe it's the point of the love story? Not sure, but the little dropped lines about molding people felt too Pygmalion-ish for me to really read as romantic.

Also, in the back of my head, there was a constant little voice wondering why it was Henry who got to be all adventurous and dash around through time, while Clare was the one who waited and worried and stayed behind.

But I did like the book; it's just much more difficult to say why I like something than to pick at the problems, sadly. I might not reread it often, however, given some rather depressing bits.

ETA: Spoilers in comments

Links:
- rilina's review
- minnow1212's review
- tenemet's review
- shewhohashope's review

Comments

[graygirl.livejournal.com]

I have this on my shelf and hope to read it soon. :)

[oyceter]

Hope you enjoy (and want to know what you think)!

[graygirl.livejournal.com]

I read this in record time--so it definitely had a can't-put-it-down factor for me. The structure was great--I wonder, too, how she handed that and would love to see her notes. :p I loved most of the concept, but the end took a turn I didn't like.

Spoilers (if anyone is still looking out): I didn't care for Henry's injury (though liked the parallel dream chapter he had, as Clare had her dreams chapter). The book took a big turn here for me; I absolutely did not like the image of Henry traveling through time without his feet. I mean...gah. I liked that he got stuck in the cage, and wanted more of that. I wanted him to spend a good chunk of time there since he was so afraid of it.

I wonder how much of this book was inspired by Byatt's Possession since she quotes from it at least twice.

Henry travels, and while Clare isn't jumping through time, she does go on her own journey of sorts--and it's so typical that it involves wanting a child, isn't it? That irked me, too. I was somewhat appalled that she and Henry allowed themselves to get pregnant so many times--and was a wee bit horrifed that a traveling-Henry was the one to do the deed...that made my skin crawl a bit. Didn't feel entirely consensual.

I'm glad to have read it, though.

[oyceter]

Yeah, I was pretty irked by the end, starting with the entire pregnancy plotline. I think after a while (especially with the onset of the pregnancy plotline) I had figured out Niffenegger was going to do something really bad to Henry for maximum angst, so when the bad stuff started happening, I was sort of rolling my eyes.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

I also generally enjoyed this, and shared your feelings on the near squick factor. It was genuinely moving despite it flaws--it made me cry (rather against my will) at the end. My main complaint, though, was the pretty half-hearted explanation for the time travel. It just made me snicker about bad genetics.

[oyceter]

Some spoilers:

I was pretty moved until I got to the point in which Clare is trying desperately to get pregnant. And for some reason, the description of it, or of her desire, must have clashed with something in me, because I rapidly lost sympathy for her after that. It was just so typically feminine that I started taking more note of Clare's overall passivity in the narrative.

I think you can argue that Henry is also a very passive agent as well, given that he involuntarily time jumps. Also, I sort of rolled my eyes a little at the ending(s) -- I felt horribly bad about it, and it depressed me, but I could see it coming from a mile away after all the talk of pregnancy.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

I mostly bought the romance, but yes - you could see the ending a mile away. That's why I said I cried rather against my will; I hate the feeling that a book has successfully manipulated me into tears. ("Manipulated" being the operative word there.)

A better, if very different, book with involuntary time travel is Octavia Butler's Kindred.

[oyceter]

Yeah -- I got sniffly but felt manipulated.

Thanks for the Butler rec!

[riemannia.livejournal.com]

Just thinking out loud here: is being manipulated the same thing as seeing the ending a mile away?

Because he never visited Clare beyond a certain age you had to know that something happened but I'm not sure how one would change that.

Will disclose that I am a big fan of this book! I thought it was very well-written, too.

I loved Butler's Kindred, but it's about something else entirely.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

Just thinking out loud here: is being manipulated the same thing as seeing the ending a mile away?
As I was using the word, not exactly. I've always felt that it's not hard for a book or movie to make a reader cry or feel something strongly; all you've got to do is get the reader relatively well invested in the character and then do something (good or bad) to that character to evoke an emotion. But the ability to evoke strong emotiond doesn't necessarily indicate the quality of a book; sometimes the emotional plot twist is one that's no good artistically. And at that point, the choice to go for cheap emotion in place of something subtler and more complicated seems manipulative.

The most emotionally manipulative things in the world for me, probably, are romantic comedies.

possible spoiler

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

Maybe spoiler! Don't look!

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....OMG, he isn't her child or something dreadfully squicky like that, is he?

Re: possible spoiler

[oyceter]

No! Thankfully, no!

Ew, squicky.

thank goodness

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

Definitely squicky. ecccch.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Hm. I've been wondering for a while whether to pick this one up, and frankly I still can't decide. However, there are so many things I ought to read first that by the time I get to it it'll be heavily discounted, so I guess I'll just wait. It's nice to read a review, though, because there is just no way to tell from the jacket if the book is any good.

[oyceter]

It's interesting, and I did like it, but I am not as enthusiastically awed by it as the reviewers seem to be. Also, in the end, I didn't quite buy the love story, which is a sort of death knell to the whole "timeless romance" thing.

[actoplasm.livejournal.com]

I did enjoy it as a refreshing storyline that I'd never seen before, and not really being a fan of any sort romance stories, I was amazed at how caught up I was in the whole story which was essentially a romance with some time-travel. Though it would have been neat if we'd found out more about the time-travel and how it all worked and how Henry could have used it more usefully and ultimately have avoided the ending.

Though the last two entries kind of bug with how they seemed like they should have totally been in reverse order. And there's something incomprehendible about imagining the death of your husband, seeing him die, and then spending the rest of your lifetime remembering him and then to have one more visit near the end of you days with him, awakening all the pain of the loss, as you know he will leave and that will finally be it.

And everytime I read anything about time travel, I can't help not thinking about Doc Brown and his whole disruption of the space-time continuum thing, and what if they had done more to change things.

But I will remember the story as something special and new and may read it again one day, but not for a while.

[oyceter]

I think my brain shut down about halfway trying to get through the various paradoxes and moebius-strip-type loops of time travel ;).

The part that really got to me about the time travel was that basically Clare and Henry both created each other in the image of some other Henry or Clare that they had. Very confusing.

I sort of want to see the author's notes while she was writing it, just because I was so amazed by the structure of the book.

[graygirl.livejournal.com]

Reading it nownownow, and kinda can't put it down. ::squeezes eyes shut to avoid spoilers in comments:: ;) But yeah...why is Clare the one to wait...it's what women do? Feh.

[oyceter]

Yeah, that part bugged me the most... will be interested in what you think when you finish!