1 post tagged “book a month challenge”

Yes, I realize that it's March, but I just finished my January book. This is a reflection on me, not the book. Clearly I've lost the challenge, but I will post my review as planned and then move onto the March subject from there.

January's Theme: Time
The Time Traveler's Wife
Audrey Niffenegger
Fiction, Adult

This book is about Henry, a man with the ability to travel through time. Unfortunately for him, he can't take anything with him when he time travels, including the clothes on his back which puts him in precarious situations as he pops up naked throughout time. He also can't control where or when he travels. But he has found that he continues to visit Clare, his future wife, throughout her childhood. And so the story is of these two people who are connected through time for their entire lives.

It's a sweet, touching and inventive story that weaves different parts of their stories together from different parts of their lives.  It's interesting that the author removes the entire idea of the space-time continuum that Star Trek is so fond of screwing with. In this story, time is static.  It's already all been done, and nothing can change. It certainly simplifies the concept of time travel and and the story ends up being not about changing the past, as so many of these stories are, but about just living a life.

My only criticism is that the story is written from both Henry's and Clare's perspectives alternately, and while this works for the story I don't feel that the author made their voices distinctive enough.  Henry sounded like Clare, and Clare like Henry, no matter what their ages, so sometimes I had to go back to see whose section I was reading. But apparently this was the author's first book and therefore was really impressive in how a complicated story came together and had real emotional impact.

Now on to March: Craft