Books Worth Reading

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The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger (2003)

Clare: It’s hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he’s okay. It’s hard to be the one who stays.

Henry and Clare have been together, in one way or another, all their lives. That’s because Henry is a time traveler, an ability that is out of his control, and he tends to hop around at various points in past and future to see the people who are most important to him. So an older Henry starts visiting his future wife, Clare, when she is only 6 years old. By the time she meets him “for real,” in the present timeline, she has loved him for years, while he is only meeting her for the first time.

A story about time travel done well is a difficult thing to write, and this is one done well. Despite the non-linear story and overlapping timelines — even the scenes when Henry appears with himself at different ages — the reader never feels lost. The structure of the novel unfolds and then folds again quite neatly, bookended by young and old Clare, always waiting for Henry to appear out of time.

Ultimately, this is a tragic romance, mainly because of the Henry’s predestined death. But even more than that, the story is tragic because Henry appears to have no choices, no free will, in his life. Because he has already experienced what will happen, he has no power to change it — it has happened to him, even if it happened in the future. He has no control over his own life. Which raises the question of whether Clare has choices too, such as the choice to move on after Henry has gone, or whether she is predestined to wait her whole life for him to appear one more time.