Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Published: January 2003
Publisher: Harcourt Inc.
546 pages (paperback)
I’ve been meaning to read this forever, but never got around to it. I’m glad that I finally did, however, because this book is amazing, romantic and enchanting; I regret it took me this long to discover this gem.
The story is about the relationship between a woman named Clare Abshire and a man named Henry DeTamble. Henry meets Clare when he is 28 and she is 20, but Clare has known Henry all her life. She met him when she was 6 and Henry was in his thirties or forties. How can this be? Henry has a rare genetic disease that causes him to become displaced in time involuntarily. He is a time traveler, and the Henry that Clare met was a future version of him.
The concept sounded fascinating to me. Personally, I find this to be a very unique and interesting take on time travel. Henry can’t help when he time travels, and he can’t help where he ends up or in what period. When he time travels, only he is transported, so any clothes or items on him are left behind; thus he always shows up naked. He teaches himself how to steal, pick locks and other survival skills in order to remain inconspicuous in whatever time period he ends up.
The story is primarily told from Clare’s present time, with past, present and future Henry’s walking in and out of her life. Before she met the “real” Henry in present time, she was always waiting and wondering when a future version of Henry would appear. After she met the “real” Henry, she was always worrying when he disappeared and waiting for him to return to present time. Indeed, the flow of time in this book can be confusing at first but after a few chapters in, I understood Henry’s time traveling and how he was affecting his past and future selves by doing so.
I found this book really refreshing, from the time travel concept to this relationship style Clare and Henry have. It’s something I never seen or read about before and I was constantly intrigued by it. I think many women can relate to Clare, myself included: the idea of waiting and not knowing what your significant other is doing. (Maybe males too, but from my own personal experiences, it’s a female thing, hahaha). The characters are fantastic. I could tell there is something really, truly special between Clare and Henry; their relationship was sweet and bitter at the same time, and affected me so much I could not stop turning the pages of the book.
Things I noticed were that Niffenegger’s writing is very point-blank and simple. She writes very matter-of-factly, like “She opened the fridge then poured herself some orange juice. She sat down and thought about Henry.” (I made that one up). Very simple sentences, yet when they are all strung together to create this story, they have a powerful impact. A second thing about the story is that, while the romance is very touching, it is rather cliche and overly dramatic at times. While Henry and Clare’s particular situation may be new and exciting, their romance in general is classic and not that new. The idea of a woman waiting faithfully, patiently for her lover to return to her — and the lover yearning for his wife back home — has been around for eons. The thing with this book is that it takes this age old concept of romantic love and makes us look at it from a different angle, a very refreshing and different angle, and that is what makes this book so wonderful to read. I definitely recommend this novel to everyone to read.
My Rating: 5/5
No comments:
Post a Comment