Book-It '10! Book #58
The Fifty Books Challenge, year two! This was a library request.
Title: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Details: Copyright 2003, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "A most untraditional love story, this is the celebrated tale of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who involuntarily travels through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate affair endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trap that tests the strength of fate and basks in the bonds of love."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I was actually looking for a graphic novel written by Niffenegger and this popped up. Aware that it was a movie, the general premise of the plot (and what I read was not what was on the back cover-- otherwise I can tell you I would've passed) intrigued me.
How I Liked It: The name and the cover looked distressingly like Nicholas Sparks (in fairness, I've never read a book by him, but I'm familiar with his "brand") but names and covers don't always tell you everything, right?
The book's premise is admirable, and called to mind Confessions of a Memory Eater. Unfortunately, this book lacked much of that one's originality past the premise.
The pacing and setting is well done (I am loudly averse to anything set in the future that isn't intended to be comedy, but Niffenegger does a decent job when venturing there) and decently plotted.
However, the characters leave something to be desired and this is what hurts the novel the most. It's hard to say which is worse, the characters that are literary stereotypes or the characters that are racial stereotypes (racial stereotypes in a novel can and should be easily disposed of-- but replacing a stock character with a real one is hard work). A disposable, shrill ex (ditched for the more wealthy and "chaste"), a slightly-better-than-pidgin-English speaking Korean neighbor, a wealthy, dysfunctional family, a maid who's "a cross between Aretha Franklin and Julia Child" (re: Black), a distant father... the list goes on. And Niffenegger's way with description (particularly similes) apparently does not extend to her characters, who she feels she must inform us are African-American, Asian-American, and so on. It doesn't matter, except that she points it out. Also, the treatment of gay and lesbian characters and homosexuality in general, is troubling. The words "dyke" and "faggot" are thrown around without the narrative cushioning them. A sympathetic main character beats a man near death for suggesting that he's gay. While having "friend" gay characters (one dying from HIV, the other briefly dating the aforementioned shrill ex), it still feels almost datedly bigoted.
This is another example of how much better a book could be being obvious and seeing it fail makes it that much harder.
Notable: The author gives subtle mentions of the eras themselves that Henry travels in and is experiencing without going overboard (useful once she reaches the future tense). She delicately notes real-life events and places. As the book progressed into 2001, I tensed to see how she'd handle September 11th. While it's clear the event occurred during her writing rather than before (if for nothing else than the timeline she mentions in the acknowledgments), she handles it better than many authors would. Just another reminder of how much better this book could've been.
Title: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Details: Copyright 2003, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "A most untraditional love story, this is the celebrated tale of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who involuntarily travels through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate affair endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trap that tests the strength of fate and basks in the bonds of love."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I was actually looking for a graphic novel written by Niffenegger and this popped up. Aware that it was a movie, the general premise of the plot (and what I read was not what was on the back cover-- otherwise I can tell you I would've passed) intrigued me.
How I Liked It: The name and the cover looked distressingly like Nicholas Sparks (in fairness, I've never read a book by him, but I'm familiar with his "brand") but names and covers don't always tell you everything, right?
The book's premise is admirable, and called to mind Confessions of a Memory Eater. Unfortunately, this book lacked much of that one's originality past the premise.
The pacing and setting is well done (I am loudly averse to anything set in the future that isn't intended to be comedy, but Niffenegger does a decent job when venturing there) and decently plotted.
However, the characters leave something to be desired and this is what hurts the novel the most. It's hard to say which is worse, the characters that are literary stereotypes or the characters that are racial stereotypes (racial stereotypes in a novel can and should be easily disposed of-- but replacing a stock character with a real one is hard work). A disposable, shrill ex (ditched for the more wealthy and "chaste"), a slightly-better-than-pidgin-English speaking Korean neighbor, a wealthy, dysfunctional family, a maid who's "a cross between Aretha Franklin and Julia Child" (re: Black), a distant father... the list goes on. And Niffenegger's way with description (particularly similes) apparently does not extend to her characters, who she feels she must inform us are African-American, Asian-American, and so on. It doesn't matter, except that she points it out. Also, the treatment of gay and lesbian characters and homosexuality in general, is troubling. The words "dyke" and "faggot" are thrown around without the narrative cushioning them. A sympathetic main character beats a man near death for suggesting that he's gay. While having "friend" gay characters (one dying from HIV, the other briefly dating the aforementioned shrill ex), it still feels almost datedly bigoted.
This is another example of how much better a book could be being obvious and seeing it fail makes it that much harder.
Notable: The author gives subtle mentions of the eras themselves that Henry travels in and is experiencing without going overboard (useful once she reaches the future tense). She delicately notes real-life events and places. As the book progressed into 2001, I tensed to see how she'd handle September 11th. While it's clear the event occurred during her writing rather than before (if for nothing else than the timeline she mentions in the acknowledgments), she handles it better than many authors would. Just another reminder of how much better this book could've been.