Map
The Time Traveler's Wife (Harvest Book)
 | The Time Traveler's Wife (Harvest Book) Audrey Niffenegger Date: 27 May, 2004 — $11.20 — Book Rating: |
The concept of time travel has always been, to my mind, the stuff of sappy romances. Case in point: Somewhere in Time. The usual story is always someone traveling forward in time or traveling back in time with the aid of some magical thing and then meeting someone there and usually ends with the protagonist either staying in that time frame, or leaving it and bringing the person they met to real time or meeting a reincarnation of sorts of the person they met in the past.
The Time Traveler's Wife treats the concept of time travel a little differently. It is a disease called Chrono-Displacement Disorder. A man named Henry discovers that he can time travel at age 8. All throughout the book we are treated to glimpses of Henry's time travel, showing him at different stages in his life, even interacting with younger and older versions of himself.
It is basically, but not totally, a love story between Henry and Clare, who becomes his wife. Their love story unfolds in the episodes of Henry's time traveling: and we see how he meets Clare when she was 6 and he, 36. He continually visits her. And so Clare grows up knowing him while he has no idea who she is, at age 31, when he really first meets her.
You might think that it would be confusing, all the time-traveling going on, but somehow Audrey Niffenegger pulls it all together and you don't get lost in the timeline.
The story is told in both their voices, and so we see a the story from a He Said, She Said point of view, and identify with both of them as they live a life together punctuated by Henry’s absences.
Clare's life, of course, is a linear thing, while Henry's is a series of interruptions. Time travel, to him is unplanned, unbidden and immediate. Often caused by stress, he vanishes in one time plane to appear in another, often seeing and interacting with the Henry of that particular time plane. Despite the problems that the relationship inevitably goes through, Henry and Clare manage to stay together. For further details, pick up the book!
What I love about The Time Traveler's Wife is that it is a love story, yet it isn't only about the love between Henry and Clare. Other relationships are skillfully drawn out. And while Henry’s affliction is the stuff of fiction, the problems they both face are not. But most importantly (at least for me), it is a story that is told from a refreshingly believable twist and I was able to lose myself in Clare and Henry’s world, time travel and all, with very little prodding.