Book review

The Time Traveler’s Wife
Auther: Audrey Niffenegger
Genre: Science Fiction, Romance and Drama.

The story is about Henry who suffers from a rare genetic disorder called Chrono-Displacement Disorder that makes him travel in time and his patient wife, Clare. The story tells how they try to get through and lead a normal life without getting Henry’s uncontrolled time traveling in the way.

The two main characters are Clare and Henry. Clare is a patient artist with big gray eyes, pale skin and long red hair. Henry on the other hand is a sportive librarian with black hair and a very complex personality to understand. It can be difficult to put your finger on exactly who he is since pretty much ever chapter is set in a different time (at least in the beginning) with him being at different ages every time, which can make following his character development a bit more tricky, but it is definitely there.

In the beginning he is selfish and doesn’t seem to care that much about anything, but as the story goes he matures and becomes more responsible.

I think Audrey Niffenegger is a great writer and have made all of the characters very realistic and everyone has their flaws, just like real people. The characters in the book are basically people that we see in everyday life, which makes the story more relatable since you can find a lot of yourself in some of the characters.

Even though there are a lot of characters with own relationships and stories, the main story is the story of Clare and Henry.

The novel is a metaphor for struggling and long-distance relationships. There are a lot of novels with themes like this. It is like a form that you can fill out, needing two people and a reason for why they are apart. Usually there is one person that has to leave and one is left behind to wait for the other person to come back. In this book, Henry is playing the part of the person who has to leave and Clare plays the part of the one left behind, and that’s their importance in the story.

As mentioned before, the main theme of this novel is distance relationships and all of the other themes are built around that. Except for long distance, the book also brings up a bunch of other sorts of relationships and issues inside them, such as break ups, marriages, jealousy, cheating and different types of families.

There is also this other theme involved that gives the book a lot more of spice, time traveling. It involves a lot of theories of how it works (if it would exist) in a very logic and realistic-sounding way.

I really find the form of time traveling in this book interesting. You usually see people time travel through big machines etc., but I actually think that this is the first time I have ever heard of time traveling in this format where it is a genetic disorder. I find it really creative and I am highly impressed by the author.

The only book or movie that I’ve heard of that is possible to compare to this must be The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It is a movie about a man who is born aged and gets younger and younger instead of older. These two formats might not be the same, and Benjamin is not really a time traveler, but the stories and themes are similar in many ways. For example: both Henry and Benjamin have a messed up time line and both have a hard time to holding on to things because of their rare relation to time.

 

I like this book a lot since I find it very creative with a very unique twist to it. The author, Audrey Niffenegger, is amazingly gifted and it is sad that she has only written two novels.  I also find it relatable in many ways even though I haven’t necessary experienced what the story tells, but Niffenegger makes me feel like I have.

 

To be honest, I get more touch by the situations rather than the characters. Maybe this is just me, but I don’t really like how the author presented some of the characters.

It is very sad at some parts and made me feel a bit emotional, but I won’t go as far as saying that I cried.
I am still very young compared to most of the characters in the book, so can’t really say that I can identify with any of the characters or reflect their lives to mine.

The only time where the book spoke about teenagers was when Clare was in her teenage years, but me and her grew up very differently, so there isn’t really much in her that I see in myself, but I saw so many personalities and characteristics from the book in people around me, which is a good sign of realistic characters which I find extremely important in a novel in order for it to be interesting.

I think that I learnt a lot reading this book, a lot more than I might think myself. I for example developed my understanding for long distance relationships and how tough they can be and  it gave me a new definition of thinking outside the box.

I think that this novel is very inspiring in many ways, looking at the strong characters and especially the creative and motivated author. I truly admire her. This book must have taken a very long time to write and plan out; all of the dates are carefully written out in every chapter and match each other logically.

Even though I like it in many ways, there are a few things that a don’t like, such as the fact that the book could be a lot shorter if you would exclude some unimportant chapters that has no importance to the rest of the story, there are a bit to many of those, how it takes way to long for the reader to get a proper description if Henry and actually most of the characters, even though I think you get to know the side characters better than the protagonists. It can be really hard to understand them sometimes, especially Henry. I think that it is because his character is so complex and difficult to follow, since he is constantly traveling in time.

This whole novel is a giant puzzle that the reader has to solve, but it is a nice puzzle, a putting all of the positive things about the book against the less positive things makes it to a 4/5 for me and I would actually recommend it for the ones with a good patience and drama-loving readers.