Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveler’s Wife
Publication date: 2005
Publisher: Vintage
Price then: £6.99
Price now: a copy of No Logo by Naomi Klein
Purchased from: swapped via Read It Swap It
From the synopsis: “The extraordinary love story of Clare and Henry, who met when Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty.”
Judging by the time I have spent with my head in its pages in recent days, I should have adored The Time Traveler’s Wife and, in many respects, I did. I cared about the characters’ fates from the very start, their situation was somehow believable despite clearly being utter nonsense, and the novel was structured so that I just had to keep reading. Niffenegger is a gifted storyteller, without her prose being distracting in any way. With some of my favourite authors, I find myself looking away from their books after a particularly astute phrase or paragraph and forgetting about the story while I think about how amazing they are. With this book, it was all about Henry and Clare and their story which, ultimately, is a schmaltzy romance.
No matter how smoothly the story rattled forward, and how much I cared about the outcome, once I’d finished it I couldn’t help thinking that it all seemed just a little bit contrived. SPOILER ALERT. When Henry dies, it’s in the arms of his wife as their friends and family countdown to the New Year, rather than one day when he was doing the dishes. When he meets his daughter in the future one time, her teacher allows her to leave her school excursion to spend time with him, even though he’s been dead for five years and could well be a child rapist. For every person who won’t believe in time travel until they see conclusive proof, there are two others who just kinda go “oh right, I get it.” And the bit at the end where Clare is 82 and is embraced by her long-dead husband? I’m sorry, but Niffenegger totally put that shit in to add value to the film rights.
That said, I haven’t really been able to put it down.
