Well, after months of not blogging, I am pleased to be back at it. I have probably read 50 or so books in the past year that I didn’t get the chance to write about, but as the book I just read taught me – one must live in the present!
Niffenegger, Audrey. The Time Traveler’s Wife. Toronto: Vintage, 2004.
A story like no other, The Time Traveler’s Wife melds science fiction with truly memorable characters and a passionate love story with genius and flare. As Henry experiences time travel again and again after the ripe age of five, he leaves all romantic notions of his impossible gift/curse behind. Unable to control when or where in time he travels, he is often left to thievery and deceit to cover his disappearance in one time and appearance in another. If he is lucky, he finds himself visiting with a younger/older version of himself, his future wife Clare, or even his dead mother. Unfortunately just as often he is left unknowing where or in what year he has landed in.
Clare is six when she meets Henry for the first time; he is thirty six. As an older Henry continues to visit Clare throughout her present, a bond forms between the two of them. Traveling from a future time when they are married, it is hard for Henry to avoid shaping Clare’s future. As their love grows, Clare is torn by the idea that she must wait to meet Henry in his present before they can start their life together. Clare’s perseverance is rewarded though, her and Henry fall even more deeply in love; she is happy. Soon though, their blissful marriage is plagued by sorrow as they attempt to start the family that Clare so intensely wants.
A refreshing spin on love, The Time Traveler’s Wife was thoroughly engaging from beginning to end. The empathy Niffengger is able to produce from the reader for the victims of a concept not even based in reality is praise worthy. Many times reading this book I forgot that time travel was not real, and Henry and Clare only characters in a finely crafted story.