Just finished reading The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffeneger for the second time and so far, this is still the best love story ever (to my opinion). Of course the basic background of the ‘time traveling’ itself is extraordinary and very interesting.
The Time Traveler’s Wife is a story about Henry –someone who has the ability to time travel but has no control over it- and Clare, his wife. It’s about how Henry desperately struggling to live his life without knowing where would he be the next minute, his frustration and his loneliness that he feels when he thinks he’s different, about how Henry and Clare live their destiny, about their faith of their love, about how they persistently stick to their love, no matter how much pain they have to go through.
This novel is very thorough and detailed. Audrey is perfect. There is no missing logic when she scientifically describes the CDP -chrono displaced person- that Henry suffered.
What I really like about this story is the love, the passion, the faithfulness, the willing to love someone as he is, no matter how odd his gene is, despite the fact that he would suddenly disappear for no one knows how long. And the amazing thing is that it makes me think that there's actually a big master plan for all of us. Must be weird to know that the future is out there, it's 'already happened', that every little thing has been set and there's no way we can escape from it. And there’s also a lesson about family, that no matter how screwed up our family is, they’re still a major material of ourselves. I think that’s why anything happened to family usually cause a major (if not permanent) effect on someone. No matter how we try to run from them, deep inside we want them to be there.
Oh .. and the poems....the books, and the songs and the poems. Henry is a librarian, his father is a talented violinist and his mother is a famous opera singer, while Clare is an artist. No wonder that in the delivery room, when Clare was attacked by a massive pain, she asked Henry to recite some of the Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Very classy. My favorite quote: Clare to Henry’s father
“But don’t you think that it’s better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?”
In a word: this novel is rich. Imagination, art, love, faithfulness, passion, friendship, the persistence…it’s all there.