Sunday 16 October, 2005

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Time Traveler's WifeThe Time Traveler's Wife is got to be the best book I've read all year. It's an ageless (or should I say timeless) love story, between Henry and Claire, and it's beautiful, intelligent and moving book.

It's a story about Henry, who has a genetic mutation that makes him travel involuntary through time, and Claire, his wife. Claire meets Henry for the first time when she's six and Henry is 36, but Henry meets Claire for the first time when he's 28 and Claire is 20. Claire lives her life lineary like rest of us and has known Henry all her life, but Henry gets to know her much later in his life, only to visit her as a young girl when he is older.

Dispite the complicated sounding concept, it actually works extremely well and is easy to follow. The timeline follows Claire, but since Henry is visiting from her future it works in two levels. However it sounds like, it's not science fiction, it's a pure heartfelt love story, perhaps the best one I've ever read. Claire and Henry's love is undying and can take anything, it starts from the end and ends with the beginning, and it intertwines into itself. Henry is gravitating through time towards Claire, and it's like a self-fulfilling profecy: it will happen because it has happened, and the future can't be changed because it has already happened.

It's such a deeply touching book, it's also about letting go and living in the moment, something that Henry is never able to fully do. As Henry involuntarily gravitates towards important events and people in his life, he also has to live again and again his mother's death, deaths of other important people in his life. But he also gets to see his mother alive and happy, he gets to see Claire grow up into the the woman he falls in love with. But although Henry is the one travelling and leaving, Claire is equally impacted. She is the one left alone, she is the one who has to worry and wonder where and when Henry is. It's hard for Henry to go, but it's just as equally hard for Claire to stay.

This book takes my breath away... Please go and read the prologue from USA Today. I hope you will love it as much as I have.

Posted by kolibri at 16 October 21:58, 2005
Comments
# 1 - rannva (on October 17, 2005 07:26 PM):

Gosh, I so completely agree with you! This book is magical. I was a wreck and a total mess toward the end of the book. A whole box of Kleenex was used up just like that. I was afraid the book was going to end so I tried to stop reading and taking pauses so it would last longer. No book (at least not for as long as I can remember) has made such an impact on me emotionally as this one. I could go on and on. I think being married, too, makes it all the more meaningful to me as a reader. I understand what it means.

So glad you brought up this book. I recommend it to all my friends!


# 2 - kolibri [TypeKey Profile Page] (on October 17, 2005 10:17 PM):

Oh I'm so happy someone shares this with me! I was afraid I came out like a babbling idiot, trying to convey the immense greatness of this book, but at least one person understood!

And tell me about the Kleenex, it was just impossible. I kept hopes up until the very end, and it was so beautifully done I couldn't have hoped for more. Magical, truly magical.


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