The Time Traveler’s Wife
December 29, 2007
I first heard of the book when Journeyman just came out. How the book and the series had the same premise, was the word out on the street but it couldn’t be any more different. Journeyman centers around Dan who has to go back in time to save people so the future would be a better place, something like Time Cop played by Van Damme, except without the bad dialogue and over the top effects. The book centers on actually the protagonist’s wife, hence the title, and how she copes with her husband’s disappearances ever since she was six. Confused enough? Let me enlighten you.
Henry meets Clare when she is only six years old and him thirty six. And they get married when Clare is twenty two and Henry thirty. How can that happen you ask? Well Henry has a genetic disorder which allows multiple Henry’s to exist in same places at the same time. Whether it is a young Henry, with an older Henry or even Henry’s of the same age. Unlike other time travel stories where if the protagonist meets their doppelganger the space time continuum would cease to exist, in this story it doesn’t, which is pretty refreshing to say the least.
Well this book could have been an all out sci-fi time travel extravaganza but it isn’t, this is merely a love story with a twist. This is about Clare’s love for Henry and how she waits for him for all those years to spend the little time they get together, to enjoy and cherish it knowing that she might not be able to see him again for days, months and even years until the day she meets Henry of her timeline and they get married. And even then that Henry will vanish to meet the young Clare several times which would surely be hard on Clare but she copes on, which makes this story beautiful, saying the love can conquer anything, even time.
I couldn’t put the book down since I bought it. The story is told in a first person perspective from both Clare and Henry, each chapter occurring in a different time-line. The writing is excellent making the whole story even though it is extraordinary, believable. Some chapters are accompanied by beautiful narratives and poems by other authors which coincide with which Audrey Niffenegger (first time author) is writing about. One of those is this beautiful example.
clock time is our bank manager, tax collector, police inspector;
this inner time is our wife
- J.B.Priestly, Man and Time
This goes into my collection of best books of all time. It’s refreshing to see an author write such a risky story, which could have easily bombed, and go with it full force, in this time of generic crime-thrillers, fantasy and science-fiction not to forget the ever popular genre of Da Vinci- like conspiracy novels.
Next on my reading list; The Lovely Bones.
