Book Review: The Time Traveler's Wife

[greyfable]

Excerpt:
"What is the Meadow?" I am practically hopping with excitement. I have never met anyone from my future before, much less a Botticelli who has encountered me 152 times.

"The Meadow is a part of my parents' place up in Michigan. There's woods at one edge of it, and the house on the opposite end. More or less in the middle is a clearing about ten feet in diameter with a big rock in it, and if you're in the clearing no one at the house can see you because the land swells up and then dips in the clearing. I used to play there because I liked to play by myself and I thought no one knew I was there. One day when I was in first grade I came home from school and went out to the clearing and there you were."

"Stark naked and probably throwing up."

"Actually, you seemed pretty self-possessed. I remember you knew my name, and I remember you vanishing quite spectacularly. In retrospect, it's obvious that you had been there before. I think the first time for you was in 1981; I was ten. You kept saying 'Oh my god,' and staring at me. Also, you seemed pretty freaked out about the nudity, and by then I just kind of took it for granted that this old nude guy was going to magically appear from the future and demand clothing." Clare smiles. "And food."

During this section, I put the book down and decided it wasn't worth my time. Then two hours later I was bored, and decided to go back to it because, if nothing else, it was a very easy read. For those of you who have never heard of it, The Time Traveler's Wife is a love story featuring a librarian named Henry and an artist named Clare. When she met him, she was six. When he met her, her was twenty-eight.

Warning: I will be talking about anything and everything that happened in the book, including most major plot twists and, yes, even the ENDING. If you are going to see the movie and want to be surprised and uninfluenced (this is very opinionated) DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW.

Warning 2: LONG. 4,000 words. Sorry, I’m a windbag.


I picked up this book for one reason: The author is a teacher at my college - Columbia College Chicago - and I thought that was pretty cool. I've never met her (she's in the art department; I was in the television department), and don't know anything about her, but reading this book I can definitely tell she went to Art School. Henry DeTamble is an artsy girls dream man. He's a librarian who's read everything you can imagine, and probably in its original language (Clare and Henry both speak French, German, and at times read Latin). He quite Neruda poetry, listens to punk music, banters like its easy as breathing, and dresses in fun clothes like suits with lime green ties (more on clothing later).

The bulk of this book takes place in the 1990s, following the beginnings of their romance in 1991 and continuing years into their marriage - though, it takes place in lots of other time periods, too. Henry's time travel seems to let him go 50 years either way, though he tends to travel into his past and Clare's past. I guess this makes sense. The book explains that Henry's time travel is caused by a genetic disorder called "Chrono Impairment", so its plausible enough that his subconscious would often, but not always, send him back to significant moments in his life. He has revisited his mother's death hundreds of times. She died in a car crash. He was five. He survived because he time traveled out of the car right as a sheet of metal that fell off a truck was about to decapitate them both. See, time travel has biological imperative. It was useful one time!

Aside from that, though, time travel sounds like a complete bitch. Henry cannot bring his clothing, or anything else, with him and he has no control at all over where he ends up, or how long he'll be there. Time travel is often random, but it is also triggered by stress and, every so often, bright flashing lights (just like epilepsy, Henry explains). Roger Ebert writes in his review of the movie version (released today), "What’s remarkable is how upbeat and romantic [Henry is] able to remain, considering the difficulties of always rematerializing naked. You’d think he’d be worn down and demoralized."

I agree Roger Ebert. And in the book, he was - for, like, five years that are barely represented in the book at all. We get only a few glimpses of Henry before the age of twenty-eight, but he assures us during his POV chapters (or segments, rather, since the POV switches between Henry and Clare quite frequently) that he was pretty terrible. Between the time traveling, grief over his mother's death, and a rough childhood with his father he was on the verge of alcoholism! He says. We do get one POV segment where he drinks himself to the point of alcohol poisoning and ends up in the hospital. This is when he is dating depressive Ingrid, who he dumps the night he meets Clare. Ingrid, of course, never gets over him, because girlfriends in books never do. Anyway, Clare motivates Henry to be better! He stops drinking to excess (eventually he even stops drinking), cuts his very cool shoulder length hair, and eats more (if I had a hamburger for every time the author described Henry as "unnaturally thin" or "cancer-patient thin" I would be able to eat for a month).

Not that this is inherently unrealistic. Sometimes, love does motivate us to be better. But as I read, I kept thinking, "man, this story would be much more interesting if it wasn't so nice." If Henry wasn't so wonderful or cool (did I mention that, in addition to all the other neat things about him, he's the son of a Chicago Symphony Orchestra violinist and an Opera Singer?), if Clare were not so sweet and certain. I kept thinking, "how cool would this story be if a horror writer got a hold of it?" Because, when you think about it, their romance is creepy.

As mentioned, Clare meets Henry when she is six. He is somewhere in his thirties. He hides, stark naked, in trees beside the family meadow (they are $$$ so that have lots of land). He convinces her that he's her friend, and she gives him her beach towel. How could Henry not convince her? He's already visited her before, when she was older. And in the future, Clare was expecting him, because he gave her a list telling her every time he was going to come (it's a time-paradox list; Henry gives it to Clare when she's six, but only because Clare shows it to Henry when they're married; who knows who wrote it). To Niffenegger's credit, I can feel how Clare would fall in love with him. Clare's love is very believable. I think if I knew a man from early in childhood, and was able to trust him the way children sometimes do, and he always looked at me like he was in love with me, and he was always so wonderful to me, and taught me interesting things, and was my secret... yes, I would fall in love, too, even though he's sometimes as old as forty-five.

For the most part, Henry's a gentlemen. He treats her kindly and avoids talking too much about the future. By the time Clare's a teenager, she has it all figured out, and she spends lots of time throwing herself at him, trying to get him to have sex with her. I BET you can figure out how this ends. It's so obvious where that is going, that I'm not going to include it in this review. Their inevitable coupling wasn't interesting. What was is how much he let her kiss him before hand. There are no scenes where they make out, but when she's in high school (15 onward) Henry does permit the occasional kiss or cuddle. I suppose, armed with the knowledge that it will all turn out okay in the end, it doesn't matter much. But I kept thinking, "wow, that kind of thing could screw up an impressionable sixteen year old. Creepy!"

It does leave an impression on Clare, who barely dates at all - but has a terrible chooser when she does. Like many characters in romantic novels, these characters have not known love or happiness with the opposite sex until they found each other. Henry, as I mentioned, was dating a depressive, and when he wasn't doing that he was screwing around. Clare didn't see the point in dating. She was already in love with Henry. She knew she would marry him. She knew that they'd meet for real when she was twenty. So, why bother? But, to keep up appearances she goes on one date with a jock in high school. She won't put out, and he nearly rapes her, giving Henry a chance to come in and help her get revenge. When Henry time travels back to in-the-present-Clare she looks at him and says, "Thank you for that night" and they never speak of it again, and its no big thing.

Maybe I'm strange, but if I had just finished terrorizing a teenage for my teenage future wife and I popped into the present and all my future wife - who has never, not once, been violent ever - says is, "Thanks Honey," I'd be upset. Knowing the capacity that someone has for violence - justified or otherwise - is important, and certainly that's an event from the past that would change the present. But it doesn't. Nothing ever does. Henry pops into the present and beats a guy to get his clothes, and Clare's friend Gomez - a polish guy with a cool but unexplained nickname - sees and tells Clare. All Clare says is, "oh, Nick, huh? Well, Nick's a jerk." It would make sense, if Clare were a callous character, but she isn't. The only way to preserve this in the face of the realities of Henry's life (which involves a lot of mugging and pickpocketing - when you keep appearing random places naked you need to survive somehow) is to turn a blind eye to what he does when she's not around.

But I guess there isn't a point in objecting to anything when you've taken the point of view that life is predetermined. This also explains why Henry never feels threatened by Gomez, who is obviously in love with Clare the entire book, even after he marries Clare’s best friend. In a scene that was supposed to be shocking but wasn’t, we find out that Clare, bored waiting to turn twenty and remeet Henry, even slept with him once. I guess I understand why Gomex is not threat, but I am surprised two nice people aren’t outrages that one friend trapped another into a loveless marriage. And especially since Gomez was already dating Clare’s best friend when she slept with him - which is a very un-Clare thing to do much less ignore, but she denies a lot even though it seems like she wouldn’t, and she denies things so silently that you hardly notice unless you think about it, so the reader mistakes it for love.

But back to predetermination - Henry says can't change the past. Or the future. Clare and Henry spend a considerable amount of time being sad about things. He's sad that he had to watch his mother die, and can't stop it. He's sad that bad things happen to his friends, but doesn't bother trying to stop them. There are only four meaningful instances when Henry breaks the rules and uses his knowledge of the future. 1) To get money. I would to. He memorizes the next day's lotto numbers. 2) To help their romance. When Clare is young, he tells her where they'll meet. Later, when there is baby drama, older Henry tells Clare not to give up. The forth instant I'll keep quiet about, unless inquiring minds want to know, but its the smallest moment and my favorite "Henry tells Clare about the future" moment. All I'll say is it happens in the past.

Question: If you believe all events a pre-determined, why bother trying to have rules at all? By that logic, Henry telling or not telling Clare about the future changes nothing. All it does, it make Clare's life a touch more normal, and make Henry a nicer guy. *sigh* He's so nice. He's so nice. They're both so nice.

As much as I grumble about how nice they are, I must confess - I like them. I understand them, and I care about them. And, yes, I did think Henry's history was cool, with his wicked musician parents (at least, pre-accident they are wicked; post-accident, his dad is an emotionally abusive alcoholic, because its more tragic that way). And I like Clare, and her idyllic house, her neat German nanny... Clare's home life isn't perfect, either, though he childhood wasn't the nightmare that Henry's was. Her mom is a depressive and pretty much an alcoholic, her dad is a lawyer who can be very critical, and her brother inherited all her father's worst qualities. I find both their childhood believable enough, but sometimes Henry's just feels like too much. Despite all the scenes that take place during Clare's childhood and a fifty page segment when Clare brings Henry home to meet the folks, I feel like we spend less time on Clare's family, and I like them better for it. They feel more believable somehow. Maybe that's because, unlike Henry's dad, who reforms somewhere in the background, again because of meeting Clare (to an extent), Clare's family never changes.

I wonder if some of my discomfort with the coolness of the character's background and character traits comes from being too close to the action. There were so many times reading the book that I thought, "Oh yes, she went to Art school!" The book takes place primarily in the 90s, an I went to Art School in the late '00s, but replace the word "flannel" with skinny jeans" and boom! This was my scene. I suppose that Niffenegger was just writing what she knew, but there were so many times when I felt that she was heavy-handedly trying to create these cool characters with cool lives, especially whenever music or clothes were mentioned. Henry knows every punk band that ever existed (I wouldn't be surprised if Niffenegger, or at least on of her friends, knows too). Whenever there is an important occasion, Clare and Henry where important clothes and Niffenegger describes them at length. Or, for a few sentences, anyway. But in a book with sparse descriptions (in the excerpt I posted, Niffenegger barely describes anything; the rest of the book is better, but things are never especially detailed), these descriptions of clothing stick out. (And, on a humorous personal note, I remembering a so-terrible-it-rocks Harry Potter fanfiction that Rachael and I used to read, called “My Immortal” - I put on my black miniskirt and my fishnet stockings and my My Chemical Romance t-shirt….)

As much as I liked the characters, though, I was not always sympathetic, especially in the second half of the book. I think there are three reasons for this 1) The second half deals largely with their struggle to have a child, which for whatever reason didn’t interest me, 2) The second half is where they talk about the methods of the madness - doctors study Chrono Impairment - and… eh, and 3) I hate their wedding scene, which is the ending of part one. Hate, hate, hated it.

No life-changing moment in this book is complete without some time-traveling. I think I’d be sympathetic if my atheist boyfriend snuck out during church and time traveled away for five minutes. I don’t like going to mass, either. I might even understand if he left for a second or two during the birth of our child - he did come back, then. But the wedding was ridiculous. SPOILERS. So, Henry is naturally nervous. For months, he’s been looking for a drug - anti-epilepsy medications, anti-psychotics - to keep him in the present, but they all turn him into a zombie or worse, so he’s on his own for the big day. The worst happens - he time travels right before the ceremony and doesn’t come back until well into reception. Luckily, a future!Henry steps in and marries Clare. She marries a 40 year old version of her lover, and no one seems to notice (except for Gomez and another close friend, who help sneak present!Henry back into the reception later on).

And Clare doesn’t mind at all. She’s not bothered one bit. It’s the most romantic day of her life.

Now, one of the aspects of the book that I liked about this book was Clare’ relationship to older versions of her husband. Because she grew up with older Henry, she admits that she feels comforted when she encounters older versions of Henry (late 30s, 40s) in a way that her 30 year old Henry can’t replicate. Sometimes, its sweet (the scene when future!henry tells Clare to keep trying to have a baby because he has a child is very sweet, even if it ruins the suspense). But this is just too much for me. I can accept that Clare doesn’t mind that Henry doesn’t share her childhood memories. She knew all along that he wouldn’t have them until he was older. But I cannot accept that she wouldn’t feel betrayed by the fact that they do not have a shared memory of their wedding. Henry was 30 during the wedding, but the Henry who actually married her was 40 - she just waited ten years for him to know? I know Clare’s life demands patience, but that would infuriate me. I lost respect for both of them after that happened and they both failed to react in any way at all.

The first half of the book is happy compared to the second, which contains baby-having drama (Clare had more miscarriages than I have fingers on my right hand), another parent death (though this is a part of the narrative that works), and some unresolved drama from Henry’s past cropping up (remember, I said he dated a depressed girl who never got over him? Go ahead, just guess, I bet you know what happens), and other things. In addition to the parent death, there is one other part of the narrative here I really like - their introduction to Dr. Kendrick, who figures is burdened with explaining Henry’s time travel to the audience. Sans Clare, almost every character reacts to time travel with disbelief and then unrealistic (in my opinion) acceptance. Dr. Kendrick is different, because of the way he comes to believe Henry. Henry knows a horrible truth concerning Dr. Kendrick’s future, and it hurts, and it works.

Ultimately, Henry dies. His death, and a horror he suffered before his death, is all due to the time travel. Within a year, he goes to the wrong place at the wrong time, gets frostbite and loses his feet. Honestly, sometimes I feel like this part of the plot was just in there because the author and her art schooly friends would feel like its cool. I know my friends and I like a story that pushes boundaries and lets truly terrible things happen - that why I loved Perdido Street Station which I read a little bit before this. But only months later in his timeline Henry gets shot (by Clare’s brother and/or father, when they are out hunting, opps, on a day that isn’t listed on the paradox list) and dies. He manages to time travel back to Clare’s arms before he does. This means that when Henry meets Clare’s folks, they have already killed him. It should be a tragic realization, but the presentation is so clumsy that it just feels needlessly melodramatic (if well-foreshadowed). So the foot amputation trauma feels pointless. Henry doesn’t learn anything from it.

I guess Niffenegger is just trying to add suspense. We know that Henry is going to die, and this is a fake out. But it just seems gratuitous. Niffenegger does this early, when St. Clare is having all his miscarriages. Future!Henry tells her to keep trying, so she does, and loses another fetus (which, comes to think of it, that miscarriage it probably the grossest when described). See, she fooled us! But I wasn’t surprised. Nor was I surprised when it turned out that past!Henry was the one to father the baby, in the end. Isn’t that a fun time travel trick? Present!Henry got sick of the all dead babies, so it wasn’t until Clare slept with a past version of her husband who wandered in that she got pregnant for the last time.

Henry leaves Clare a letter that she reads after he dies, promising that he’ll see her again when she’s in her 80s. We spend thirty or fifty - however many pages it was - after Henry dies waiting for this reunion. Henry, of course, doesn’t tell Clare what will happen at the reunion, so I was so excited to finally read it. But, unfortunately, all Niffenegger felt the need to write was, “Henry appeared, and he embraces old!Clare, the end.” I was disappointed.

All that said, I was a decent book. I don’t regret reading it. The characters are relatable, even if they are a bit nice and remarkably unflawed. Their early romance had its moments. There were some REALLY fun time travel scenes. And I understood everything on an emotional level, which is always satisfying. But there were some elements that stuck me as unrealistic, the book always felt like it was very consciously trying to be cool, and the second part was not nearly as good as the first part. There were lots of questions the books simply ignored. For all the talk of Clare being like a sailor’s wife, always left behind be her husband, she spends remarkably little time being bothered by Henry’s sudden disappearances (I don’t think we got a proper rant until page 400). And the ending was very blah. Their kid - like so many other elements - was a bit unrealistically cool/perfect, though at least she had an awesome name. Alba. Which is Italian for “dawn”.

Somehow, I got through over 3,000 and haven’t talked about the narrative structure. I suppose I should. It’s almost linear. It begins at Clare and Henry’s first meeting, from his POV. Then we jump around in Clare and Henry’s childhoods at first. Then, back to the present and the romance. By that point, things have settled down, and we primarily stay in the present. If we travel to the past or the future, we are usually with present!Henry as he travels. Too bad. I think future!Henry’s POV during his adventures in Clare’s past were interesting. It’s funny. I think that pre-Clare Henry is interesting because he’s fucked up. I like post-marriage Henry because he’s mature. I like him least during the height of their romance. Weird. I think I like Clare best when she’s a teen trying to seduce him. It’s when she’s the most fun, and the most flawed.

Other stories that I think would have been more interesting:
1) So, Henry and Clare’s child is a time traveler, too. In one scene, she runs into Henry when he was twenty-five or so, and dating Ingrid. Ingrid realizes its his child, but Henry is clueless. Ingrid could probably tell that she wasn’t the mom. Can you even imagine? I think that moment, from her POV, would be a great story. As much as I complain about Ingrid part of the story being predictable/cliché, I like her.
2) Imagine if Henry was a bad person who gave into teen Clare’s advances? I’d love to see a story like this where the characters weren’t so squeaky clean, and the creepiness/inherent horror of the situation was recognized.
There are a hundred other possibilities, but I forgot lots of them, and those are the two that interest me most. I think I would have loved this book if it was a horror novel.