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3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
So far, this book is nothing like I expected...it's better! I love how modern it is, and candid. It also has raised a lot of discussion topics between Reggie and me --- the excerpts I read aloud to him have brought along some comical discussion. I look forward to reading this book --- I'm about half way done and I just started yesterday!
done! great questions on free will arise when reading this book. Should Henry take responsibility? Should he do more to change the world? Would it really affect the future?
Other questions: Knowing what he is, should Henry involve other people in his world? Should Clare be subject to his effect?
Other questions: Knowing what he is, should Henry involve other people in his world? Should Clare be subject to his effect?
I couldn’t put this book down! But I felt there were a lot of scenes that could have been cut and then I wished there had been more explanation to the ending. But overall, very compelling read.
(4.5 stars) I first read this book when I was 15 and 16. I say 15 and 16 because I technically started it at the Minneapolis airport on our way home from a vacation in Florida was I was 15. I have this very clear memory of sitting on a chair in a bookstore in the airport reading the first couple of chapters surreptitiously, being simultaneously dazzled by the prose and scandalized by the almost immediate sex scene. Around a month later my best friend bought it for me on my birthday, and I gobbled it up in a manner of days alone in my room. In the next two years I passed it around among my friends secretly. I remember one friend reading it behind her binder in history class, ignoring the world around her. A couple years later I did the same thing again in college - I remember my friend Tim returning it with a mixture of cheerful anger and heartbroken gratitude. “Why would you do this to me??” he asked.
So. I’ve got a history with this book. It is impossible for me to review it entirely from my viewpoint now, because (much like the characters!) when I read it I am 16 and 18 and 21 again. When I was fifteen, the book was adult and scandalous and incredibly glamorous and sophisticated. The characters speak multiple languages and they have sexy sex (incredibly, I learned about the clitoris from this book) and they quote poetry and attend opera and talk about big ideas. The book was smart and swoony and romantic and impossibly sad, and the time travel appealed to my nerdy little mind, and the parties and clubs and big city Chicago setting to my small town heart. I of course read hundreds of things before this, from Pride and Prejudice to the Lord of the Rings to a series of young adult novels of dubious quality, but in many ways The Time Traveler’s Wife was the first really grown up book I read.
Now, rereading it almost a decade later, I’m not as fully enchanted. Though undoubtedly progressive for its day, there are things that feel a little icky now - the way the author writes race (especially regarding Claire’s family cook and her friend Celia), some of the language feels awkward, and - most importantly - Claire feels SO young now. That is, of course, the eternal conundrum of this novel - either the whole “man visits his wife as a child and teenager” things squicks you out, or it doesn’t. For me, the childhood bits work, and Niffenegger has created a tangled enough Moebus strip to absolve her characters of any actual predation. In many ways, it’s Claire in the present that shocks me more - she is twenty in the present day when things start up. Twenty! Sure, a far worldlier twenty than I was, but twenty nonetheless.
One of the strangest things about rereading books as I get older is that I am, of course, gradually becoming older than the characters. Now when I read YA and the kids complain about their parents, I often take their parents’ side. I find myself thinking more about parenthood and aging and mortality, less about the question of who you will fall in love with. I will be 28 in September - older than Claire is for at least half this novel. It’s a strange place to be.
Now, rereading this book that meant so much to me, I find myself thinking about the kid I was at 15, drinking in this novel of forbidden pleasures and the glamorously mundane. I am not where I thought I would be - and I am not nearly as glamorous as Henry and Claire. But I am happy, and in love, and I have eaten at fancy restaurants and gone to shows in Chicago, and I can read a little German, and I have read Homer and Rilke and Nietzsche, and someday soon perhaps I will have a husband and a home and a child.
So yes. The Time Traveler’s Wife still moves me. It still made me laugh, and swoon, and sob uncontrollably. This is one of the books that has - and always will have - shaped my life. Time is nothing.
So. I’ve got a history with this book. It is impossible for me to review it entirely from my viewpoint now, because (much like the characters!) when I read it I am 16 and 18 and 21 again. When I was fifteen, the book was adult and scandalous and incredibly glamorous and sophisticated. The characters speak multiple languages and they have sexy sex (incredibly, I learned about the clitoris from this book) and they quote poetry and attend opera and talk about big ideas. The book was smart and swoony and romantic and impossibly sad, and the time travel appealed to my nerdy little mind, and the parties and clubs and big city Chicago setting to my small town heart. I of course read hundreds of things before this, from Pride and Prejudice to the Lord of the Rings to a series of young adult novels of dubious quality, but in many ways The Time Traveler’s Wife was the first really grown up book I read.
Now, rereading it almost a decade later, I’m not as fully enchanted. Though undoubtedly progressive for its day, there are things that feel a little icky now - the way the author writes race (especially regarding Claire’s family cook and her friend Celia), some of the language feels awkward, and - most importantly - Claire feels SO young now. That is, of course, the eternal conundrum of this novel - either the whole “man visits his wife as a child and teenager” things squicks you out, or it doesn’t. For me, the childhood bits work, and Niffenegger has created a tangled enough Moebus strip to absolve her characters of any actual predation. In many ways, it’s Claire in the present that shocks me more - she is twenty in the present day when things start up. Twenty! Sure, a far worldlier twenty than I was, but twenty nonetheless.
One of the strangest things about rereading books as I get older is that I am, of course, gradually becoming older than the characters. Now when I read YA and the kids complain about their parents, I often take their parents’ side. I find myself thinking more about parenthood and aging and mortality, less about the question of who you will fall in love with. I will be 28 in September - older than Claire is for at least half this novel. It’s a strange place to be.
Now, rereading this book that meant so much to me, I find myself thinking about the kid I was at 15, drinking in this novel of forbidden pleasures and the glamorously mundane. I am not where I thought I would be - and I am not nearly as glamorous as Henry and Claire. But I am happy, and in love, and I have eaten at fancy restaurants and gone to shows in Chicago, and I can read a little German, and I have read Homer and Rilke and Nietzsche, and someday soon perhaps I will have a husband and a home and a child.
So yes. The Time Traveler’s Wife still moves me. It still made me laugh, and swoon, and sob uncontrollably. This is one of the books that has - and always will have - shaped my life. Time is nothing.
Interesting premise, horrible execution. Ending up throwing it across the room when I finished.
This is another book out of the three that left me sobbing. The story is designed to make readers cry, which I wished I had known about because then I wouldn't have read this book and have all that sadness to deal with. The story is definitely haunting.
This is a perfect example of how you take something magical and exciting (timetravel) and turn it into something very ordinary and boring. Time travel is present, but really this book is the complete story of a married couple's life from they first meet and until they die with lots of love and ordinary life in between. And since I'm not a great admirer of the concept of " the one and only", we-knew-the-very-first-time-we-met-even-though-she-was-6-years-old type of story, this book is kind of lost on me. Also there is nothing left to the imagination. Everything that happens is carefully reflected on from both points of view.
I did like how the time travel part has clearly been thought through, so that everything gradually falls into place.
It was a cute story, but I don't feel I would have missed out on anything by not reading this. I love books, and I almost always prefer books over movie and tv adaptations, but knowing and loving the Doctor Who / River Song epic-timetravel-love-story, this just didn't impress me at all.
So for ("Twilight" style) romance lovers - get started. Those who got interested because of the "timetraveller" part of the title, and quite enjoy a little romance, spicing up their sci-fi - go watch Dr Who (again ;)
I did like how the time travel part has clearly been thought through, so that everything gradually falls into place.
It was a cute story, but I don't feel I would have missed out on anything by not reading this. I love books, and I almost always prefer books over movie and tv adaptations, but knowing and loving the Doctor Who / River Song epic-timetravel-love-story, this just didn't impress me at all.
So for ("Twilight" style) romance lovers - get started. Those who got interested because of the "timetraveller" part of the title, and quite enjoy a little romance, spicing up their sci-fi - go watch Dr Who (again ;)
Overall it’s a great book, however I’m still unclear about my feelings on the love between Henry and Clare. Because when they are adults, it’s a great love story. But I’m kind of put off by the way Clare was sort of put off by her being conditioned and dedicating her whole life to Henry. I would have loved a part focusing more on Clare AFTERWARDS, to really sell the book title. (and how Alba managed to get her time travelling under control too)
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A deeply disturbing tale, not least because it is marketed as romantic. This is a story of the ultimate control exerted by one person over another, dictating the events of someone’s life so completely that they make no choices of their own.
Clare, a vulnerable girl who feels unloved by her family, is groomed by Henry from the age of 6 to make him her world & follow the path he lays out for her without question or complaint. My anticipation of what might be uncovered when the magnitude of Henry’s god-level manipulation became clear to all kept me listening to the end, which is extremely ironic & tells much of my own fears & desires. All characters in the book, bar the children, were pretty vile &/or incredibly selfish, even Clare but then she’d been moulded to be that way.
This is not a pleasant book but it does make you think.
Clare, a vulnerable girl who feels unloved by her family, is groomed by Henry from the age of 6 to make him her world & follow the path he lays out for her without question or complaint. My anticipation of what might be uncovered when the magnitude of Henry’s god-level manipulation became clear to all kept me listening to the end, which is extremely ironic & tells much of my own fears & desires. All characters in the book, bar the children, were pretty vile &/or incredibly selfish, even Clare but then she’d been moulded to be that way.
This is not a pleasant book but it does make you think.