The Time Traveler's Wife

The Time Traveler's Wife

As a longtime time-travel book fan I have read many books with some sort of time-travel. The first book I read that dealt with this subject was called The Thyme Garden by Edward Eager where children went into a garden and crushed thyme between their fingers and traveled elsewhere in time. I recently re-read it, and discovered the author wrote a number of other time-travel books for children. While not really "time travel", I loved the Narnia series where the children traveled to a different place. Another book I enjoyed was Andre Norton's Dragon Magic in which people were able to time travel where they wanted. Secretly, my favorite romantic movie is "Somewhere in Time" and I have even written a short story or two involving time-travel.

I purchased The Time Traveler's Wife a few months ago after briefly hearing about it and thinking the title and cover of the book were intriguing. I suggested it as a possible read for my book group, but another book was chosen. Then an online group to which I belong suggested reading it, and I joined in. My real life book group is still not interested. Pity.

Henry first meets Clare at the Newberry Library in Chicago when Henry is 28 and Clare is 20. However Clare first meets Henry when she is 6 and he is 36. Henry has a disorder that he suspects is a bit like a seizure disorder, except instead of having a seizure, he is transported backwards and forwards in time, ending up naked where ever he lands.

In this book Henry may not change events, although he is forced to witness some tragedies time and time again, he is always helpless to change the outcome.

This book is breathtakingly beautiful and heartbreakingly sad. However it is uplifting and I am envious of the love these two characters have for each other. The author writes it in such a way that the time-travel part of the story is believable.

I had a slightly difficult time with the ending, not the very ending, but what happened to Henry in the year before the book ended. The book was like a pleasant ride on a mild roller coaster, and suddenly it became, for a while, a jarring walk through an evil carnival fun house.

One last thing I liked about the book was the fact that many place names were real. I recently spoke to someone who said that she even went to some of the concerts mentioned in the book.

It is hard to believe that this is Audrey Niffenegger's first book. It is nearly perfect in every detail. I read an interview with the author that suggested she wrote the book in a different order than in which it was published.

I got the title first, and played around with it for quite a long time, slowly evolving the characters in my head. I wrote the end before anything else, and then began to write scenes as they occurred to me. TTW was written in a completely different order than the one it finally took. I understood early on that it would be organized in three sections, and that the basic unit was the scene, not the chapter. It has a rather chaotic feel to it, especially at the beginning, and that is deliberate-there is a slow piecing together, a gradual accumulation of story, that mimics the experience of the characters. I made a lot of notes about the characters. I had two timelines to help me stay organized, but no outline of the plot. (Audrey Niffenegger interviewed by Mark Flanagan. Full interview available here.)

I sincerely hope this will not be Niffenegger's last novel.

Rumor has it that Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston have purchased the rights to the novel and are going to star in it. Not who I pictured at all. I can possibly see Pitt as Henry, but Aniston is too much that Friend's character to me.

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Links of interest

• http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/interviews/story.jsp?story=483769
• Interview of Niffenegger by England's The Independent

• http://www.januarymagazine.com/fiction/timetrav.html

• Review of The Time Traveler's Wife by January Magazine

• http://www.book-club.co.nz/books04/1timetravelerswife.htm
• Review of The Time Traveler's Wife by Jonathan Cape in New Zealand

• http://www.soveryposh.com/x/books/titles/time_travelers_wife_the/
• Review of The Time Traveler's Wife on So Very Posh - Bookworming
  

More Book Group Reads

Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women - Geraldine Brooks

This book was very interesting. I was not excited at the prospect of reading a book about women in the Muslim Religion, but after the first sentence I was hooked. As much as I liked this book, I do think that the author had strong opinions and they did come across in the book. It would be interesting to read a book that just told facts, with no judgment at all.

Under the Banner of Heaven : A Story of Violent Faith - Jon Krakauer

We read this book for book group right after Nine Parts of Desire and called the pair our "foray into books about women oppressed by fundamentalist religions".

I wrote about it in my Bookcrossing journal. Here is what I said there:

Under the Banner of Heaven : A Story of Violent Faith is an engrossing read, as all of Krakauer's books seem to be. His non-fiction reads like a good novel and it is always obvious that he is very interested in the material about which he writes.

Krakauer started out to write the relationship between the Church of Latter Day Saints and its history, but ended up focusing more on the Fundamentalist Mormons with the mainstream Mormons in the near background. The book intertwines the stories of a gruesome murder committed in the name of God, with the history of mainstream Mormonism and the violent history of Fundamentalist Mormonism.

This is a fantastic book to read if you are interested in learning more about extremes in religious faiths. My book group read this on the heals of a book dealing with another fundamentalist theme: Nine Parts of Desire : The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks.

Middlesex: A Novel - Jeffrey Eugenides

This book was fun to read. Again the first sentence hooked me.

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

This book has many layers and on the surface is about a hermaphrodite and her struggle with his identity. The book is also about family history and ethnicity in the United States. The book talks about surviving - what some people need to endure to survive. I highly recommend it. The author grabs you from the first sentence and doesn't let you go until the end, teaching you more than you probably ever wanted to know about hermaphrodites, Detroit, and Greeks in Turkey.

I went to the library last week to borrow another book by Dan Brown, and found that not one of his titles were available in any of the libraries in Montgomery County. They were all either checked out our on hold or in transit. His books are obviously very popular, and this is proof.

Other proof was seen in today's Sunday comic section where The da Vinci Code was featured in the comic strip "Mutts". Unfortunately it not yet available online.

The da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown

The da Vinci Code had me hooked from page one. From there it was a losing battle, and I admit defeat. I had trouble putting the book down, and read well into the night, on two consecutive nights.

The book is about a college professor who finds himself a suspect in the murder of a curator of the Louvre. He has to solve a series of cryptic puzzles, at first in an attempt to clear his name, but later to solve one of the greatest mysteries of history.

Not only did I read the book with complete fascination, I also participated in two web quests sponsored by Random House which were fun to do. One holds the promise of a possible prize and the other was just for fun.

It has been a while since I was so fascinated with a book that I could hardly do anything else. I guess that is a good thing, because I get little accomplished when I am so into a good read.

Mr. Brown is able to weave real places, events and people among his fictional places, events and people so seamlessly, it was almost frightening.

The Piano Tuner
by Daniel Mason

I began reading this book about two months ago. It was a book group pick and even though I was not interested in the subject matter, got it from the library anyway. I did not like it at first, but then it seemed to become interesting. However, something either happened to my concentration or the book was really not so good because I quit reading it, missed book group and am going to take it back to the library unread. Glad I didn't spend money on it.