What can I say about a book that made me cry? That I loved it, seems a little unnecessary! Sometimes you come across a book with a story just bursting to be told, a story so inherently emotional and unforgettable that it impinges on your thoughts at the weirdest of times as you go about your daily routine. Audrey Nifenegger’s’The Time Traveler’s Wife’ is one such.
Henry DeTamble meets Clare Abshire for the first time in his life when he’s 28 and she’s 20, they get married when he’s 30 and she’s 22 but Clare has already known *him* most of her life for she first met him when she was 6 and he was 36. Time travels in this extremely distracting fashion in Niffenegger’s engaging novel. Henry, the time traveller, has a problem with staying chronologically stable in moments of stress or anxiety in his life. He can never control where or when he’s going but events in his life that exerted a lot of psychological impact always pull him back to them - times like the death of his mother, events surrounding Clare, his wedding etc. The storyline proceeds in little vignettes through different periods in Henry’s life as he time travels and while this is difficult to get used to at first, the story emerges first beautiful, then haunting, of the disturbed librarian who struggles to to live normally with a genetic disorder that can uncontrollably take over his life and of the artist who grounds him and keeps him whole with her love for the time that they have together.
It’s hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is wondering if he’s okay. It’s hard being the one that stays.
I found’The Time Traveler’s Wife’ to be a nicely paced, intensely moving story about the couple’s meeting, courtship, marriage and the end itself stayed with me a couple of days after I was done reading it. It’s told either with Henry’s or Clare’s point of view and the author keeps the two voices distinct enough that we never get confused. And it’s interesting because of the timeline, credit should be given to the author that a coherent story actually exists with all the shuttling around that’s done here. The book loses it’s momentum slightly after they get married, the story faltering as the marriage flounders through miscarriages and Clare’s depression but I still was not tempted to skim over the pages and that’s generally my yardstick for how involved I get in a book. It picks up pace soon after the couple’s daughter Alba(another time traveller who inherits her father’s genes) is born and the end is well worth it. It’s harrowing, compelling, emotional and more.
Is there a logic, a rule to all this coming and going, all this dislocation? Is there a way to stay put, to embrace the present with every cell?
Niffenegger has created some rules for Henry’s time travel, he cannot take anything with him so he generally ends up at places naked, without money, often being persecuted for these very reasons. But, of course, as in something involving time travel, plot holes and more abound. The most confusing to get around for me was the quintessential chicken-and-egg problem. Henry visits Clare when she’s 6 because he loves her in his present, but when she grows up he tells her to come to Chicago to find him, thus(almost) ensuring that they would meet. Irrespective of the plot holes, I thought the time travel here was an interesting concept and it definitely worked for the story.
I hate to be where she is not, when she is not. And yet, I am always going, and she cannot follow.
I think the most I liked was how finely the author has detailed the predicament of a man born with an uncontrollable genetic disorder, and how this affects the people he loves and lives with. These are not happy characters. Of course, out of all of them, Henry is the person who is the most sensitively written and the person whom we come to care about. The author deals with Clare’s anxiety whenever Henry time travels beautifully,
When I was a child I looked forward to seeing Henry. Every visit was
an event. Now every absence is a nonevent, a subtraction, an adventure
I will hear about when the adventurer materialises at my feet, bleeding
or whistling, smiling or shaking. Now I am afraid when he is gone.
as well as her identity crisis when she’s a teenager and the Clare as seen through Henry’s eyes is wonderful - bright, sensitive and caring. It’s the Clare who when interacting with the couple’s best friends Charisse and Gomez who I didnt like much and couldnt connect with. And I didnt much like the resolution between Henry and Clare, it was almost too Hollywood-ish! Whether Hollywood does think so remains to be seen in the upcoming movie version.
Finally, if I were to categorise this book it would be as contemporary romance rather than sci-fi/ fantasy under which genre I actually found it in the library. But, to people who might be put off by this classification, do give this a chance. The author gets so many things right and it’s an emotionally satisfying, enjoyable read!