Now, on the surface this book definitely telegraphs itself as pure chick-lit. Thankfully, for me at least, the science fiction twist of time travel makes this novel accessible to people like me. To be honest, it's more of a front for a guy to read a romance novel written by a woman that more often than not dwells on the complexity of feelings, love, and what it all means than it does on how cool it is that one half of the couple is quantum leaping through time. It's all good though; we're all adults here... for the most part. As I just mentioned, the author of this book is a woman (with the entirely rad name of Audry Niffenegger) so it's safe to say that she captures the female voice of Clare much more accurately than she does Henry. This is not to say that Henry's characterization as a male is off, simply when it comes to the complexity of each of their innermost monologues I imagine Clare's is more akin to that of the fairer sex. Henry reads well, but admittedly I found his thoughts and observations to be a tad more 'matter-of-fact' than I would think of my own and when he does choose to go deeper, it's only ever so much too melodramatic. These are such minor discrepancies that while reading, most people will take little notice of their existence.
I've outlined the premise of the novel in painstaking detail over the last two posts concerning this book, but for consistency's sake I will go over it one more time. Henry is a person with a genetic affliction that causes him to randomly jump through time; most often to impactful moments in his own timeline both past and future. While offering a unique view of his life and those around him, he finds himself naked and exposed everytime he travels and this lands him in all kinds of trouble as one would imagine. Time traveling also gives him a very fractured life, often living moments in his past that won't occur until his future (if this sounds puzzling, jump back to my last two posts and just skim some of the chapter summaries). Clare is the woman of his dreams, his true love, and the woman he's destined to be with. Clare first meets Henry as a six year old and he is in the later years of his troublesome life. These initial moments essentially entwine their lives forever, but I found it interesting later on that these moments that made Clare Henry's do not occur in Henry's life until he has already lived a long life with her. It's an interesting game of chicken/egg, but it makes for an interesting mental quandary. The two eventually meet in what can be considered their mutual present where Henry is only eight years older than Clare and from here the book layers and loops itself catching up with Clare's past while becoming Henry's future and all the while binding these two people together in a very passionate if not disruptive love for the ages.
The phrase 'love for the ages' sounds as corny to me as it probably does to you reading it, but it definitely applies. In some cases its hard to accept how strong and unshakable this attraction is, so much so that I found myself once or twice looking for a more concrete foundation to go on. It dawned on me later that Niffenegger has gone to great lengths to be as symbolic with this story as she is literal. What I mean here is that the whole lynch pin of this relationship is based on waiting. Be it Clare literally waiting weeks as a child for Henry's next appearance, to Clare waiting to meet Henry in her present so they can begin their lives together, finally to Henry waiting to start traveling back in time and having all the momentous meetings with his child-version wife she always holds in such high regard. As all of these wonderful things are already fated to happen, waiting is all either person has to do to realize the rewards of such a love. So while they may not always be perfectly happy, Henry and Clare have the rare promise that everything will work out. 'Good things come to those who wait' has never been more true than this novel. Of course this raises the question of whether these two would ever have worked out without the predetermined nature of their love, or if indeed everything happens the way it ought to and even knowing the turns of events does not change what they mean. It's a real hell of a brain churn, but it makes for a magnetic story that deals with heavy and epic themes of love, destiny, fate, and the strength of each on simple people's lives.
Clare and Henry share a scene about halfway through the book on a swingset and Clare narratively makes reference to how as they swing in opposite directions they meet in the middle. This is obviously a thinly veiled metaphor in this context for the entire book. Like on the swing, spatially the two are together but apart meeting briefly in the middle and appreciating each other fully. Fortunately for the author, this metaphor worked wonderfully for me and lent a tragic sense of give and take and even inevitability to the entire proceedings. Indeed fate and destiny are important facets of this novel. Often Clare and Henry postulate that if Henry is coming from the future and telling her how her life will transpire (albeit vague for details), does she truly have free will or is she mechanically dancing to steps she never had a hand in crafting? It's a wonderful question explored many ways throughout the story. The simplest explanation given for the conundrum comes from Henry as he states that things will just happen the way they're meant to happen. This is not to be mistaken with being slave to fate, but rather the decisions you will make will always be the decisions you will make because you are uniquely you. It's a heady statement to comprehend to be sure, but a meaningful one. Essentially the author states that the things we do and experience are not important for the reasons we do them but for the experience of doing them. Does this rightly remove them from fate or is it simply a method of ignoring it? That's left up to the reader. In the end, even having knowledge of the future it is suggested that this factors into one's decision making and the results remain the same.
Fate shows its hand much more prominently in the final acts of the book as the pieces of Henry we've read throughout the novel start to come together and we notice frightening gaps in information where once there was a bounty. For instance, the reader may notice that the oldest Henry from the future we ever encounter in the pages of the book is forty three. Already this leaves a looming and dark question mark on a book that has thrived on the fact that everything would be relatively okay because in a sense it's all already happened. This translates onto our main characters wonderfully as they too slowly come to the same conclusions and the book winds itself inevitably and heartwrenchingly towards a future the reader and the couple inside cannot avoid. Henry and Clare live a volume of life together and share experiences most will never have the opportunity, eventually capitalizing on all of the 'waiting' potential and realizing the true love they only banked on for so long. As everything comes full circle, a sinking sense very similar to Henry's view on the future naturally blossoms in the reader -- that what will happen will happen regardless, so that in the final moments of the book as the pieces come together we are at once accepting and saddened greatly by the fulfilling completion of a novel's worth of complexity.
In the end, The Time Traveler's Wife was at once an uplifting and devastating book for me. Equal parts hopeful and profound as it provides the basic human nutrition that love is a force beyond our comprehension (like time traveling, get it?) and that it does eventually conquer all obstacles in time. In it's own way it doesn't exactly say anything new in the pantheon of love stories, but through the use of a slightly extraordinary metaphor (time travel) it connects us organically to inherit notions inside most of us. I was left with comparisons to my own life, the inevitability of life, and the notion that the future will transpire as it will no matter how hard I try to change it. This is at once a liberating and devastating message that's as true to life as it gets. Regardless of your gender or your aversions to a such-titled novel, I would highly suggest The Time Traveler's Wife to anyone looking for a profound statement on love, life, and our places in each.
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