Review: The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Contemporary Fiction, 536 pages
Harcourt Inc.
I must be mental. No. Really. What normal person would go through nearly an entire packet of Kleenex even before finishing the novel? Who would mope around the house afterwards, wandering from room to room, in a daze, grieving? Wow.
This is new, and disturbing. But in a complimentary sort of way, as obviously the author has succeeded in creating a story, and a set of characters that can evoke such a response. I don’t think I have ever been so moved that even days later, I find I cannot even discuss what I have read without becoming emotional. Why? I honestly don’t know. I do admit, however, that I am someone who, at times, cannot prevent a narrative and its characters from connecting with some emotion hidden deep inside, which once touched, bursts forth and proceeds to turn me to Jell-O on the spot.
“Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them…Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass.”
I also found that this book really is about longing as much as it is about love, and how it seems that you cannot have one without the other. It is also about time, well at least one’s perception of time. The author, in an interview with Mark Flanagan, was asked, “Was there a central theme that you wanted readers to grasp?” She answers, “I wanted people to think about the intimacy of time, how ineffable it is, how it shapes us. I wanted to write about waiting, but since waiting is essentially a negative (time spent in the absence of something) I wrote about all the things that happen around the waiting.”
As the story progresses, the reader is pulled and pushed along, just like Clare and Henry, who long for normalcy and control, and never completely achieve either. In the beginning, it is a little disconcerting, but necessary as it helps the reader connect in such a way that by the end of the novel, one cannot help but feel as if we too, are facing the inevitable, and are powerless against it.
The Time Traveler’s Wife offers us another view; a different concept, of time and how it affects our lives. Yet when all is said and done – it all comes down to the same thing, for us and for Clare and Henry. Time is endless, but we are not.
I will not say more than that in fear of giving too much away. Also, I would like to state that the ending isn’t as sad as I probably have led you to believe, however, I highly recommend having a plentiful supply of tissue at hand, just in case.
I am giving this book 5 Stars. It is that good. In fact so good, I am seriously considering coming up with a TBR-R (To Be Re-Read) List, or maybe a SDI (Stranded on a Desert Island) List. Either way, the first two books I will be adding are The Shadow of the Wind and this one.
“When I am out there, in time, I am inverted, changed into a desperate version of myself. I become a thief, a vagrant, an animal who runs and hides. I startle old women and amaze children. I am a trick, an illusion of the highest order, so incredible that I am actually true.”
