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Sunday, August 15, 2010

The Time Traveler's Wife

I wondered as I finished reading The Time Traveler's Wife how Audrey Niffenegger must feel to go from aspiring writer to blockbuster success with literary awards, a movie deal and a top spot on the best seller list with one novel. For an author who has thought so much about time travel, about cause and effect, about before and after - it must be an interesting experience.

The story is about love and relationships. That is its purpose, and time travel is the devise, the forge that creates and tempers the relationship that is the focus of the book, but the unusual details of the time travel itself were what stood out to me. This wasn't a story of a brilliant inventor or daring adventurer. Time travel wasn't achieved through science or magic. It was a disease. And while the main characters weren't all that relatable, being strangely sick I can relate to.

Henry travels through time, and he can't control when it happens or what happens when he travels. He is far more aware than most people that his life is not something he can really control. Looking at disability, at being unable to live a 'normal' life, through this science fiction analogy was fascinating to me. Time travel interferes dramatically with what this character wants to be able to do, it takes a heavy toll on him, and on his wife, who worries and waits, and it carries the constant risk of unforeseen catastrophe. Or foreseen catastrophe that cannot be prevented.

There was a lot of realism here - in the self-absorption that is so easy to fall into when you have a strange problem that isn't shared by the people around you, the futility and frustration of having your body malfunction outside your control, the wearying and wearing down effect of struggling for a long time, and the way hardship brings joy into sharper focus, but makes it almost inseparable from fear of loss.

Every person who has been terribly ill can find bits of truth in this story, however fantastical its premise and melodramatic its characters.

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