The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Note: This is really a faux "Once More with Feeling" review since I wrote down these thoughts when I read the book nearly six years ago in October 2003. It's been in the back of my mind that they were making a movie out of this...eventually...but I just saw the trailer and it flashed me back.

Last night I stayed up terribly late reading this book and crying my heart out. I was very tired when I woke up this morning, but I couldn't get this story out of my head to go back to sleep.

I'll skip the explanation of the story since it's more or less inexplicable. Suffice it to say that Henry DeTamble has a disease that causes him to suddenly and unexpectedly go backwards and forwards in time. He arrives at his chronological destination naked, carrying nothing, and violently ill and must therefore scrounge for food, clothing, and shelter. This often leads to (frequently violent) confrontations with the law.

This, of course, costs him a great deal personally, and the one shining thing in his life is his relationship with Clare whom he meets when she's 20 and, due to some whonky time traveling, also when she's 6. By the time she enters his life for the first time in the proper chronology, he's fairly messed up - an alcoholic, a womanizer, stuck in an emotionally draining relationship, feeling trapped, hopeless, and utterly without choice (though, paradoxically, the philosophical mainstay of Niffenegger's time travel is, in fact, freedom of choice).

This is easily the most memorable book I've read this year. The characters were completely real to me. I know I will be thinking about them as actual people for quite some time. Niffenegger convinced me of the utter rightness of their relationship. This is a couple that was meant to be (though I confess I still can't quite comprehend the "chicken or the egg" nature of their meeting). Their love wasn't just emotion, it was energy, sex, feeling, and compassion. They were better when they were together, and bereft and unwhole when apart. And their bond was unchanged by age or health or beauty. Clare actually prefers the older Henry who has been "spindled and mutilated" by time and circumstance - because the older Henry's soul was the one who guided her throughout childhood and helped to form her as a person. Similarly, Henry is equally happy to see Clare at any age whether pre-adolescent or elderly. She is his Clare; she is his happiness. Her outside is packaging.

The time travel as fiction device is used by Niffenegger to wonderful effect. It is the ultimate "show, not tell" technique. The reader is not privy to information, and, therefore, the emotions underlying Clare and Henry's early meetings aren't immediately apparent. This is one book that could be read over and over again, and each time the reader will understand these characters and their relationship better.

Though the book's title is The Time Traveler's Wife, this is really Henry's story. His Chrono Displacement drives the course of the narrative and all of the characters' lives. Some of his adventures are comic and all of them are interesting, but most of them showcase his tragedy. He sees things, terrible things, over and over and can't change them. He knows his own fate well ahead of time and must keep it to himself. He knows what his condition does to Clare, yet he desperately needs her to keep waiting for him. Henry is beautiful, passionate, erudite, and frenetic. He is refined and poetic yet somehow intensely masculine. And though he must occasionally be brutish to survive, he's innately gentle. It's so touching to watch him interacting with Clare as a young girl and himself as a child. His suffering makes him patient and empathetic. And it makes him appreciate the here and now more than most people. He wrings the joy out of every moment.

Clare is very likable, but somehow not as fully fleshed. Her life was particularly interesting to me because she is exactly my age. Her experiences were, to some degree, my experiences. I remember the 1980's and the early 1990's just as she did, and I listened to many of the same bands. Reading her parts of the story was like going down Memory Lane for me.

One final praise: it's so rare to find a book where the sexual side of the relationship seems to be spiritual in essence. Henry is a very sexual being and so is Clare, and their interactions together are earthy but at the same time necessary and nourishing. The are inextricably tied to each other by fate and time, they have no choice in that, but in the sexual side of their relationship they affirm that commitment and it remains a joy.

All of the above impressed me greatly, but for me the book is "only" a B+. Somehow their story was almost to poignant and sad for me to take. It's not something that I could read over and over again, though I will likely purchase it. Clare and Henry have a true love, but, by the nature of Henry's condition, it's an obsessive love. They aren't whole without each other. And, unfortunately, that condition mandates that they spend a great deal of time apart. Their longing for each other during these times was so intense that at times it seemed that I couldn't keep on reading. It was too sad. Perhaps if other aspects of their lives had been touched on or had they other sources of equally stong love and support, their life together and apart wouldn't have been so tragic. But that was not the case. I ended the book in tears.

Still, if ever a book made me think "Carpe diem!" it was this one. When I closed it, I went off to tell my husband that I loved him and the little annoyances of my life didn't seem so very important to me suddenly. Joy is fleeting but precious, The Time Traveler's Wife illustrates, and that is a lesson most of us could relearn over and over.

Here's the film trailer:

tags: time travelers wife  audrey niffenegger