By Kendra Hibbert
November 28, 2003
One of the fundamental differences between books and movies is, of course, time – books have lots of it, movies don’t. Even the most faithful film is still going to skip out on more than half the content of a full-length novel. Take the LORD OF THE RINGS for example. Even the thorough and mostly faithful extend-o version of FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING available on DVD still managed to piss off geeks everywhere for excluding Tom Bombadil in order to bring the movie in under four hours. In a book there’s an infinite amount of pages you can dedicate to hobbits frolicking around with strange men and plenty of time explore the subtleties and subtexts of a story. It’s these vitally important things that are often left out of movie versions of our favorite books and probably the reason why at least some people (like myself) still like these archaic tree-killing forms of entertainment. THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE by first-time writer Audrey Niffenegger is a novel that takes advantage of the luxuries of time allowed in book form. For this reason it’s also a story that would really suck as a movie.
The novel is a mix between two genres – dramatic love story and time-traveling science fiction – but it’s the mushy stuff rather than the nerdy stuff that takes over the majority of
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the action. Don’t expect a treatise on the physics involved in these temporal jumps; in this book, time traveling is treated more like a condition the character Henry has to live with - like epilepsy or migraine headaches - only this affliction causes him to suddenly disappear from his present and show up some time (usually in the past) naked and nauseous, invariably forced to pick pockets or break and enter to feed and cloth himself until his condition decides that he should be suddenly sucked back to his present. He has no control over when these ‘jumps’ happen or when he is sent to but he tends to keep coming back to re-live certain incidents in his life like, for example, the horrible car crash he was in when he was seven which killed his mother.
The story follows Clare and Henry, a couple who meet for the first time twice. For Clare she first meets Henry when she is six and he is in his 30s, naked and throwing up in the meadow in her backyard. As Clare grows up with the middle-aged Henry appearing in her backyard periodically, she learns to trust him and eventually falls in love with him. There’s an inevitability of their relationship, of course, since, in the middle-aged Henry’s present the two are married. What’s even more remarkable about their relationship is that even though Clare has known Henry almost all of her life, Henry doesn’t meet Clare in his present until he is 28 years old and she is 20 and he’s forced to deal with the fact that for the first time in his life there is somebody out there who knows more about his future than he does. Not only does she already know about his secret condition but she’s also aware, even before their first date, of the inescapable future when they fall in love and are married within a year of Henry’s first glimpse of her.
The time traveling enigma of Henry’s adventures presents an interesting mind-fuck to readers. The inevitability of his life and Clare’s and everyone’s in this story forces them to deal with the Fate vs. Free Will debate in every thing that they do. Every time they’re presented with a choice – like whether to eat the pumpkin pie or the macadamia nut cookie – their mind says ‘Screw it – whether or not I eat this pie it will be already eaten or not eaten in my future anyway so why bother trying to decide’. Such is the conundrum that Henry and Clare are faced with every day of their relationship. Such is the way you will start to think at least subconsciously if you sit down and read this book for any extended period of time.
There are, however, a few surprises in this book, despite the inescapable certainty of Henry and Clare’s future, and a few mysteries too thanks in part to Henry’s tendency to travel backwards rather than forwards in time and his moral decision to, for the most part, keep quiet about the future to the people he talks to (including himself). Niffenegger also uses an effective narrating style, describing an event sometimes from Clare’s point of view, sometimes from Henry’s or sometimes through one then the other so we get a new perspective on the scene depending on which character knows more about the events that will come afterward. Not only do we read what it’s like to be the one to ‘jump’ but we also read what it’s like to be the one who is left behind to pick up the pile of empty clothes and wait for their husband to return never knowing when he’s gone to or when (in the present) he will come back. This is, as a result, a very internal book and a very personal story with an interesting science fiction edge to it.
Unfortunately it can also at times be a little too internal. Nothing much in the way of action happens after about the halfway point and, although it’s touched on, nothing much in the way of explanation into Henry’s phenomenon is offered. Though it’s an interesting read and an amazing first book, because the emotional journey of Henry and Clare’s relationship plateaus after the mid-way point, THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE peters out in the end. Nothing a few well-executed explosions and futuristic gun fights wouldn’t fix when Hollywood gets through with this novel, of course, but then again that’s precisely why when this story inevitably hits the big screen you should skip the movie and read the book instead. Even half of an interesting book will still provide you with 6 more hours of entertainment than an entire movie full of crap.
Next Column: In case you’re nowhere near a calendar and look to this column to update you on the time of year – it’s the Holiday Season again! In two weeks I’ll take you through some books to get that certain someone this Annual Gift-Giving Day, which you can then borrow indefinitely and add to your personal library.
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