The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
The Time Traveler's Wife is the first novel by author Audrey Niffenegger. The story recounts the first meeting of Clare and Henry. When Clare meets Henry for the first time, she is 6. Henry is 36. But in present time, Henry is only 8 years older than Clare. How can this be? Well, Henry is a time traveler. In the novel, time travel is treated as a genetic disorder, as it is involuntary. Over Clare's life, Henry comes and visits her in the clearing behind her house in Michigan. They meet in real time in Chicago when Clare is 20 and Henry is 28. Henry works in the Newberry Library, which Clare has visited to find a book for a college paper. When Clare originally meets Henry for the "first time" in the library, he doesn't recognize her, because he hasn't actually met her yet. Even though Clare has been visiting Henry her entire life, Henry has never met her, because he hasn't traveled for the first time to meet her when she is 6. As you recall, this doesn't happen until Henry is 36. After they meet in real time, the two form a relationship that eventually leads to marriage and results in Clare having to live in real time while Henry is still a time traveler.
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Warning: Spoilers follow here.
All throughout her childhood, Clare meets up with and has conversations with Henry as he time travels. He tells her things about her future and how they meet and get married one day. Clare grows up remembering all the times Henry came crashing into the clearing behind her home and all the conversations they had. After Henry and Clare meet in real time and Clare has to remind Henry of who she is and how she's known him her whole life, they date a little over two years before getting married. After they have been married an additional two years, they decide to have children. This is a scary concept because time travel is genetic (although, it's not stated in the book whether or not someone else in Henry's family ever time traveled - at least not that I remember), and Clare and Henry are afraid their baby would inherit the trait. They endure six miscarriages before finding out what's going wrong: after a doctor finally believes Henry can time travel, he sets in motion a long plan of experiments and research to try and figure out how to keep Henry in the present. After doing test on lab mice, the doctor finds out that when the mother mice become pregnant, their fetuses are traveling outside the womb. When the fetuses return, the mother's body sees it as a foreign object, and her immune system treats the baby as though it were a disease and gets rid of it, internally hemorrhaging the mother and killing her in the process. The only way to prevent the outcome is to shut down the immune system completely. Clare sees this as another option; all they have to do is shut down her immune system, and she can have their baby. But Henry speculates that trying anymore could kill Clare, and he does everything in his power to prevent her from getting pregnant and ultimately gets a vasectomy. As luck would have it, past Henry who hasn't had the procedure travels to the present one night, makes love to Clare, impregnates her, and that baby ends up making it: a little girl, Alba. Alba is also a time traveler. As modern medicine looks deeper into the issue of time travel, however, it is suggested in the book that maybe they come to a better resolution in the future, perhaps one where Alba can choose to time travel or not if she doesn't want to; it wouldn't be involuntary like it is for Henry. Alba tells a time-traveling Henry when she is 10 that she sometimes chooses where ("when") to go when she travels, which makes Henry envious. Between a series of far-apart occurrences in Henry's life, he is shot badly during one trip, and as he is landing back in present time, his wound is worsened and he dies shortly after the fall. He leaves Clare a letter telling her that he will see her again when she is an old woman, and that in the meantime, she should live and be happy, knowing they will meet again. The book ends with the meeting Henry writes about in the letter.
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I really enjoyed this novel. I'm very stunned that this is her first novel, as it is so well written. One thing I love about the book is how Niffenegger writes in run-on sentences. I loved this aspect of the book because I think that most people's inner monologues are presented in run-on sentences, and they made the book feel true-to-life. I love the flow of the book, and how she tells the reader how old the characters are in each sub-chapter. I like that they get to see each other again at the end, but I would have liked a more detailed ending; a better monologue, perhaps, or a final ending paragraph. I also didn't like how Henry died, but I was incredibly impressed by how well she not only tied that one, but any loose ends, in the entire novel. Because of the two minor setbacks of my own personal opinion, I give the book a 4/5. It's certainly a tear-jerker, and even more so, an original page-turner.
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For Next Time:
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson
"This Master Hyde, if he were studied,' thought he, 'must have secrets of his own; black secrets, by the look of him; secrets compared to which poor Jekyll's worst would be like sunshine.'" —The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
When Edward Hyde tramples an
innocent girl, two bystanders catch the fellow and force him to pay
reparations to the girl's family. A respected lawyer, Utterson, hears
this story and begins to unravel the seemingly manic behavior of his
best friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and his connection with Hyde. Utterson
probes into both Jekyll and his unlikely protégé, increasingly unnerved
at each new revelation. In a forerunner of psychological dramas to come,
Robert Louis Stevenson uses Hyde to show that we are both repulsed and
attracted to the darker side of life, particularly when we can
experience it in anonymity.
-barnesandnoble.com
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