The Time Travelers Wife

A few days ago I finished reading “The Time Travelers Wife,” By Audrey Niffenegger. A part of me was always curious about this novel for the longest time and part of me of course wanted to read this book before the series comes on HBO in May. There was also a film version that came out in 2009 with mixed to negative reviews. “The Time Travelers Wife,” is a love story about Clare a beautiful art student and Henry a  traveling librarian. Henry has a disease called Chrono Displacement Disorder which means he travels in time but against his will. The story depicts how this affects Clare and Henry’s marriage and how they stay strong despite it all. The writing was decent and the story has an amazing plot it was just too long.

Pros

The writing was absolutely beautiful and descriptive it flowed very well. I like Clare and Henry. One of my favorite scenes we’re when Henry beat up the boy who assaulted Clare. I also like how in Clare’s teenage years, despite the fact that they want to have sex, Henry remains respectful and waits till she’s old enough. You also felt bad for these characters and I did tear up a little. I also like their daughter Alba. I like the fact that Alba has more control over her time traveling. I also like the letter that Henry leaves Clare when he knows he’s going to die he tells her to stop waiting for him. Henry wants her to live her life and that shows how unselfish Henry is. I think that’s the important lesson we can learn from this book is to take advantage of the time we have now and live a good life. I also did like the end.

Cons

The book needed to be shorter by several hundreds of pages. I felt you could skip a lot of them and still get the gist of what’s going on. It was also confusing how one part Clare could be 6 and Henry could be 30 something and then the next part Clare is a teen and Henry is 30 or 40 something. The flip flapping was extremely confusing. It needed to be in a chronological order. I can also understand how it might concern some people that a grown man is hanging out with a 6 year old when it comes to Henry and Clare and the time travel. The main thing is he didn’t take advantage and become a pervert. There was also a weird scene of future Henry showing his fifteen year old self how to masturbate. Did I really need to see that?

 Overall

I liked it. It’s one of those books you would read once just to say you’ve read it. It would have been better for me if the book was shorter and it would avoid a lot of unnecessary details. It also would have been better if the there was a chronological order with time traveling and Clare growing up instead of jumping around different parts of her life and his. None of us can time travel or go back and change the past (willingly or unwillingly) no matter how much we want to. This book is a reminder that we only have a limited amount of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years on this earth and to use the time we have to live a good life and to make others time worthwhile as well.