7. Audrey Niffenegger (2004), The Time Traveler's Wife
Monday, 25 May 2009 21:02![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
strange_complexI'm personally of the opinion that 'traveller' should have two Ls in it, but maybe people in North America feel differently about the matter. Anyway, only one L is included on the cover (in the title at least), so there it is.
Spelling aside, I enjoyed this novel very much. It suppose you could call it 'fantastical realism', or something of the sort - it isn't magical realism per se, as the time travel in it is explicitly presented as a genetic disorder rather than the result of magic, but it has the same sort of quality of depicting an entirely realistic world except for the one small detail of involuntary time travel. As such, the extent of its emphasis on the feelings and development of its characters is greater than you tend to find in a typical fantasy novel - and this, presumably, is why it's found such acclaim outside of SF circles.
I'm rather late to the party in reading it myself, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
nearly_everyone seems to have done so several years ago, but I suppose that gives me a slightly different perspective, since I had heard a lot about it before I read it. My chief surprise was to find that the time traveller (Henry) was featured in the novel as much as he was. What I'd picked up was that the novel focuses primarily on the effects of his time travelling on his wife (Clare), but although this is more true than with most novels featuring time travel, in fact the experiences and traumas of the two get more or less equal billing.
What I didn't anticipate based on what I'd heard was that Clare would encounter Henry both before they 'met' in the conventional sense, and indeed also after he had died. That raised a lot of interesting issues, in particular that of determinism, and on a technical level I felt it was handled very effectively. It could have got so confusing, but the device of stating the narrator, their personal age and the absolute date / time for each section, as well as taking us through the confusion of the narrators themselves when appropriate, seemed to maintain clarity very effectively.
The determinism issue was explored a fair amount, with Henry in particular clearly having spent a lot of time struggling with the issue of whether or not he really had free will, either on his travels or during his present. I could have perhaps done with more of it on Clare's side, though. In particular, I'd have liked to see her questioning the validity of her relationship with Henry a little bit more. I do see that the emotional impact of having someone alongside you throughout your childhood who tells you that he is your future husband, and how great your time together will be, must be pretty enormous, and that you would certainly be keen to start a relationship with such a person when you 'met' them properly. But when they begin rowing so much later on over the issue of having a baby, I would have liked just one scene in which she began to question whether being in a relationship with Henry was really best for her, and whether she 'has' to stay, just because he has told her they are still together in the future. The deterministic line could still be maintained by having her decide to stay for her own reasons, but it would have been nice to see it addressed and questioned. As it is, her utter devotion to him when he is so often revealed to be violent and manipulative was the hardest aspect of the novel to swallow for me.
That aside, though, I thought it was very emotionally absorbing, and also very stylish and clever. A novel about time travel particularly demands that the author should include structural links between different parts of the narrative, so that the reader almost feels as though they are 'travelling' between different parts of the book at certain points, and this is done on all sorts of levels. There are the obvious, direct links, where we see the same scene from the perspective of different people and / or times, but also thematic links created through frequent references to birds, for example. I particularly liked the scene relatively early in the book, when the 17-year-old Clare's driving makes Henry so terrified that he digs his own nails into his palms, and then gets his own blood all over her. I felt it really encapsulated the destructive effects of their relationship on both of them, and prefigured much of what was to come.
That prefiguring, too, is a strong theme, and again puts us in a similar situation to Henry - knowing full well how things are going to pan out, but unable to stop it. I started reading the book in the car on the way up to the CA, with a friend driving who had already read it, and by about page 50 I think I was already saying, "Um - is it significant that Henry never seems to travel into Clare's childhood from any point after his early 40s?" In some ways, the ending itself was kind of a relief when it came, although I hadn't quite anticipated how grim the run-up to it would be.
Anyway, I'm glad I read this, and indeed enjoyed it so much that I may well return to it sometime. If you enjoy fantasy novels, you'll definitely like this, but even if you usually don't, it's worth making an exception for this one.
Click here to view this entry with minimal formatting.
Spelling aside, I enjoyed this novel very much. It suppose you could call it 'fantastical realism', or something of the sort - it isn't magical realism per se, as the time travel in it is explicitly presented as a genetic disorder rather than the result of magic, but it has the same sort of quality of depicting an entirely realistic world except for the one small detail of involuntary time travel. As such, the extent of its emphasis on the feelings and development of its characters is greater than you tend to find in a typical fantasy novel - and this, presumably, is why it's found such acclaim outside of SF circles.
I'm rather late to the party in reading it myself, as
nearly_everyone seems to have done so several years ago, but I suppose that gives me a slightly different perspective, since I had heard a lot about it before I read it. My chief surprise was to find that the time traveller (Henry) was featured in the novel as much as he was. What I'd picked up was that the novel focuses primarily on the effects of his time travelling on his wife (Clare), but although this is more true than with most novels featuring time travel, in fact the experiences and traumas of the two get more or less equal billing.What I didn't anticipate based on what I'd heard was that Clare would encounter Henry both before they 'met' in the conventional sense, and indeed also after he had died. That raised a lot of interesting issues, in particular that of determinism, and on a technical level I felt it was handled very effectively. It could have got so confusing, but the device of stating the narrator, their personal age and the absolute date / time for each section, as well as taking us through the confusion of the narrators themselves when appropriate, seemed to maintain clarity very effectively.
The determinism issue was explored a fair amount, with Henry in particular clearly having spent a lot of time struggling with the issue of whether or not he really had free will, either on his travels or during his present. I could have perhaps done with more of it on Clare's side, though. In particular, I'd have liked to see her questioning the validity of her relationship with Henry a little bit more. I do see that the emotional impact of having someone alongside you throughout your childhood who tells you that he is your future husband, and how great your time together will be, must be pretty enormous, and that you would certainly be keen to start a relationship with such a person when you 'met' them properly. But when they begin rowing so much later on over the issue of having a baby, I would have liked just one scene in which she began to question whether being in a relationship with Henry was really best for her, and whether she 'has' to stay, just because he has told her they are still together in the future. The deterministic line could still be maintained by having her decide to stay for her own reasons, but it would have been nice to see it addressed and questioned. As it is, her utter devotion to him when he is so often revealed to be violent and manipulative was the hardest aspect of the novel to swallow for me.
That aside, though, I thought it was very emotionally absorbing, and also very stylish and clever. A novel about time travel particularly demands that the author should include structural links between different parts of the narrative, so that the reader almost feels as though they are 'travelling' between different parts of the book at certain points, and this is done on all sorts of levels. There are the obvious, direct links, where we see the same scene from the perspective of different people and / or times, but also thematic links created through frequent references to birds, for example. I particularly liked the scene relatively early in the book, when the 17-year-old Clare's driving makes Henry so terrified that he digs his own nails into his palms, and then gets his own blood all over her. I felt it really encapsulated the destructive effects of their relationship on both of them, and prefigured much of what was to come.
That prefiguring, too, is a strong theme, and again puts us in a similar situation to Henry - knowing full well how things are going to pan out, but unable to stop it. I started reading the book in the car on the way up to the CA, with a friend driving who had already read it, and by about page 50 I think I was already saying, "Um - is it significant that Henry never seems to travel into Clare's childhood from any point after his early 40s?" In some ways, the ending itself was kind of a relief when it came, although I hadn't quite anticipated how grim the run-up to it would be.
Anyway, I'm glad I read this, and indeed enjoyed it so much that I may well return to it sometime. If you enjoy fantasy novels, you'll definitely like this, but even if you usually don't, it's worth making an exception for this one.
Click here to view this entry with minimal formatting.
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Date: Tuesday, 26 May 2009 09:07 (UTC)---
"What about.. Skinner's extrapolations from his experiments? That we have no free will. Do you believe that?"
"Do you believe that?" Kagan asks?
"Well... I don't absolutely rule out the possibility that... our free will is really just a response to some cues that -"
Before I can finish my sentence, Kagan dives under his desk...
"I'm under my desk," he shouts, "I've NEVER gotten under my desk before. Is this not an act of free will?"
I blink. Where Kagan was sitting is just space. Beneath his desk I hear a rustle. I'm a little worried about him. I think he said to me... when I asked for the interview that he had a bad back.
---
I think that's just priceless.
Oh... I loved the Time Traveller's wife too.
no subject
Date: Tuesday, 26 May 2009 13:15 (UTC)no subject
Date: Tuesday, 26 May 2009 15:09 (UTC)