Book Review: The Time Traveler's Wife
Time travel + romance + a dash of my own era = a perfectly enjoyable late-summer read.
Greetings, all, and welcome to September.
It is already feeling very fallish here. Even though it still gets warm during the day, our mornings and evenings are delightfully cool. I've even had to put on a long-sleeved shirt for a couple of my recent morning runs. There are times when I feel like I've overdressed for a run, but not lately--I've definitely needed those sleeves for the first couple of miles, and I have not regretted them during my cool-down walk at the end of my jog.
It's been a while since I've done a book review, so I thought I'd share a few thoughts about one that isn't exactly fantasy, but definitely has some fantasy elements: The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. This book has been on my TBR list for ages; I happened to see it in a used bookstore back in February when I visited my son's family, so I picked it up and finally got around to reading it. (Side note: I have been in book acquisition mode for the last several months, which is a thing I probably should write about.)
Here's the blurb from Amazon:
"Henry DeTamble is a dashing, adventurous librarian who is at the mercy of his random time time-traveling abilities. Clare Abshire is an artist whose life moves through a natural sequential course. This is the celebrated and timeless tale of their love. Henry and Clare's passionate affair is built and endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trap that tests the strength of fate and basks in the bonds of love."
TL;DR
I liked this book very much, but I didn't love it. It wasn't life-changing or mind-blowing, and it's not going on my list of favorites, but it was a pretty entertaining read, and there were moments of poignancy that brough tears to my eyes. The structure is certainly interesting, unique, and very well done. I never got confused about where I was in time, which is quite a feat for any book involving time travel. The writing is solid, and the book is well-balanced between dialogue, narration, and description.
The Reading Experience
As I said, the writing is solid--not overdone with purple prose or heavy on any one element or another. The chapters are a reasonable length with section breaks, so I did feel like I could put it down easily (I hate stopping in the middle of a chapter!). But it is veeerrryyyy long, and I don't think it needed to be. Ms. Niffenegger could have cut or trimmed some scenes for sure.
I would categorize this book as a beach read. It doesn't demand much of the casual reader, it's easy to follow, and the love story is pretty engaging. And I think even someone who likes a little depth in a beach read would enjoy this one; the time travel and the dilemmas presented by it keep things interesting.
Observations
This Is My Era
I was struck several times over the course of this book that I was experiencing my own history. No, I wasn't the child of musicians or a wealthy lawyer, I never ran into a strange man who claimed to be time traveling from our future, I didn't grow up in the Midwest, and I was never into grunge or punk.
I was, however, a child of the 70s and 80s, just as both Henry and Clare were. I remember the events, bands, and cultural touchstones mentioned in the book. I particularly loved the moment they celebrate New Year's Eve 1999, because I remember that very vividly. And while Niffenegger doesn't dwell on 9/11, she does give it a few thoughtful paragraphs. Henry is holding his baby as he watches the planes hit the towers; I was cleaning out a hall closet with my 6-month-old baby playing on the floor next to me.
I was also struck by the fact that Henry and Clare's baby would be a Gen Z kid--a contemporary of my older two kids for sure. My kids were born in 1999, 2001, 2003, and 2005, and Alba is born in 2001. My friends all had babies between about 1997 and 2006, give or take a year or two. I never had miscarriages, but some of my friends did, and my husband and I had trouble conceiving the first time, so reading Clare's struggles definitely took me right back to that period in my life.
Not Creepy at All... Okay, Maybe a Little...
Okay, I confess: I cringed a little about 30-something Henry showing up naked in a field with 6-year-old Clare. I understand that the structure of the story required this, but sometimes, the set-up made me a little uncomfortable.
Here's the thing. Henry and Clare meet as adults when Henry is 28 and Clare is 20. That's perfectly fine. But because the post-28-year-old Henry then starts traveling into Clare's past and engaging with her from the time she was 6 to the time she was 18, she is already madly in love with him when she meets him at 20. She's basically been in love with him her entire life. No, he never abuses her or takes advantage of her (at least, not in an intentionally illegal way), but it's hard for me to wrap my head around this relationship as one that's... well, healthy.
Every time Henry interacted with Clare in the past, he impacted how she grew and developed, even if he was perfectly upstanding and gentlemanly. The book makes it clear that she only went on a few token dates to make people stop speculating about her sexuality. And there is one point where Henry exacts justice on a boy who treated Clare badly on a date. I don't mind the justice, but the fact that Henry did it just contributes to the sense that Clare isn't entirely her own person.
I think that's where I struggled the most with the love story. Even though it basically came across as charming and a little odd rather than abusive or creepy, I kept feeling like Clare never really developed her own independent self.
Timey-Wimey Stuff
Even though I have my issues with the romance in this book, I have to say that the whole time travel thing was really original and fascinating. Henry has a genetic disorder that they eventually call Chrono-Impairment. He says that his brain looks like someone with schizophrenia, and he describes the occurrences as something like epilepsy. He has no control over when and where he travels (though his daughter seems to have some control over her time jaunts), and it's only his body that travels, not his clothes or anything that's not part of his body.
The practical implications of Henry's travel were handled really well. He learns to steal clothes, food, and money to survive wherever he wakes up. He runs obsessively so that he can escape anyone who might want to catch a naked man who just shimmered into existence in the middle of a street or something. He picks locks and practices general criminal behavior to survive, which seems pretty believable.
But the really interesting part of the time travel was how Henry says nothing he does can change anything. If something happens, it's because it already happened or will happen, and he can't do anything to change it. So when he finds out the winning lotto numbers and then buys a ticket in the present so they can win the lottery and Clare can have an art studio, that's perfectly legitimate, because it's already happened--he's not changing anything.
Mind-blowing stuff, y'all.
Would I Recommend?
Yes, but probably not to everyone. I think you probably have to be generally okay with romance to enjoy it. It's also a good one for someone like me, who doesn't like romance for romance's sake, but needs a little extra depth. The time travel aspect definitely provides that depth.
Will I Read More of This Author?
Possibly. I'm not sure that most of what she's written is really up my alley, but I'll check out some of her other work.
What's Next on My List?
I've been mostly going back and forth between fiction and non-fiction this year, so it's time for some non-fiction. I'll be reading Inside of a Dog, by Alexandra Horowitz. I've had this one on my shelf for years, too, and I'd really like to understand my resident direwolves better. After that? Possibly The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu. I have been hearing about this one for some time, and I'm really hoping it doesn't hurt my brain as much as The Peripheral did.
I have no idea what I'm going to write about next week, so if any of you are secretly time travelers, pop ahead a week and check, and then drop a note about next week's topic in the comments, wouldja?
Have a good week, y'all.
Have you watched the series of The Three Body Problem? Fascinating. I haven't read the book yet, but having seen the series, I likely will get it sometime.