Reviews » The Time Traveler's Wife
Title: The Time Traveler's Wife
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Claim to fame: Underappreciated and hilarious male nudity.
Review originally published at the deus ex machina complex (and other theories)
This book is the love story of Clare and Henry. Clare meets Henry when she is six years old and he is 36 (or was it 38? I forget now) because Henry has Chrono-Displacement Disorder, meaning he travels backward and forward in time. So in truth, Henry is only eight years older. I laughed a lot at this book because of the rules dealing with time travel, but in truth it's rather staggering. The nudity, cool. Losing anything not part of his body? Really, the implications are horrific, even more so than the light examples given to us in the book. A year ago this was really popular with my friends all of a sudden. They were reading it and then getting annoyed that it was a romance, but I thought that was sort of obvious given the title. It's really just as much Henry's story as it is Clare's, though. Perhaps they thought it would have more about time traveling? It's there, but its not the point. It's more about how they work around them and how it changes them. I walked away knowing that I would never want to know my future like Henry and Clare did. It takes something away from the happy things because you also know the bad things that are coming.
I figured out the ending sooner than I think I should have. I was stirring some pasta and BAM!, right in the heart. I didn't get the whole thing, but I got enough that I hurt. I don't know what I expected before I figured it out. I guess in the end it wasn't supposed to be a mystery, through the whole book there's a tragic feeling, even in the happy parts. I don't know how I feel about the book. Did I like it? Did I not? I have absolutely no clue. I'm ambivalent about it, I suppose. It was a clever concept, but there's a lot of places where the author spelled things out or made connections and I felt like I was being led around by the nose. I guess the amount of tragedy got to me. Sometimes a book is both good and bad but you can't exactly put your finger on why. Pretty much everything I liked in the book was also something I disliked. As if that makes any sense.
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