Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife is a fascinating story of time travel and human connection. The book spotlights two characters: Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire. Henry is afflicted by a rare genetic disorder that causes him to uncontrollably time travel to random places at random times, complicating his and Clare’s lives. Their exact relationship status fluctuates from platonic to romantic throughout the book, but they maintain a constant close friendship. We enjoyed the novel’s thoughtful writing, symbolism, and varied timelines, but other areas made it less enjoyable.
Clare has known Henry for the majority of her life, in part of her childhood and adulthood. She is unable to time travel, and is often the one left at home while Henry is somewhere in the past or future. These two characters make up a huge dynamic of the novel.
The plot of this novel was very important, which often took away from the character development. A majority of the book was focused on time travel, Henry and Clare’s relationship, Clare’s artistic talent, family, and friends. But the characters were more mysterious. It was hard to imagine what Clare or Henry looked like and what personalities and interests were because they were not really talked about.
The lack of character development was made up for by the complex plot. Throughout the book, author Audrey Niffenegger creates a complex story laced with interesting themes. Henry’s uncontrollable time travel ability symbolizes humans inability to control times passing. When he travels to the future, he sometimes catches glimpses of what tragic things will happen to him, his loved ones, or even random people. When he returns to the present, he can do nothing to stop the inevitable. At one point, he recounts one of these instances, a time when he saw a young girl get hit fatally in the head with a hockey puck. He traveled back to that day time and time again, but he could do nothing to prevent her death. “It was like being in the audience at a movie. It was like being a ghost,”(55). It seems that time is set in stone, and there is nothing he can do about it. This also raises the question of free will versus fate. Does Henry really have any control over his life? What is inevitable and what is changeable? These themes make the book interesting.
A major important aspect of The Time Traveler’s Wife is the timelines that describe the beginning of Henry and Clare’s lives to the end. In the beginning of the book, it is less interesting to see Henry and Clare’s younger lives because so much of the plot revolves around both of them together and not separately. However, the middle of the book mixes the present and the past when Henry and Clare meet. It is confusing, because at times there are two or even three Henrys. But the use of a timeline, flashbacks, and especially time travel, contributes to the fun and enjoyment of the novel.
As mentioned above, the beginning of the book was not as interesting. We see glimpses of Clare’s friend and family life in Michigan. We also see Henry’s childhood when he traveled back in time for the first time. The entire book is mainly about Henry and Clare’s relationship together- and so seeing the two of them separately largely distracts from the plot.
Although we felt the characters were underdeveloped, and the plot took a while to be set into motion, the positives of this book strongly outweighed the negative aspects. Its exploration of love and time travel was thought-provoking and well done. Overall, we would both highly recommend this book.
