32. Book Club: The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

Kristy's pick for November book club.

I actually first heard about this book the summer of 2004 when I was in Vancouver and my friend Joanne couldn't stop raving about how great it was. And really that seems to be the consensus of everyone I have talked to about this book - they all loved it even more than they had been told they would. For some reason, I just didn't have the same experience. I mean, it was a good book. No doubt about it. It kept me interested and I appreciated the complexity of the storyline but ... I don't know.

I think part of the problem may be that I just have issues with the idea of time travel in general.
And I probably over think the whole concept, I'm the first to admit it, but the fact that I can't suspend my disbelief makes it a lot harder to enjoy the story. It's silly. Because I could get over the whole chrono-impaired and gene mutations but I couldn't deal with the time traveling. Maybe because the whole "logic" that time travel almost has to be based in means that elements of fate or destiny have to play a larger role in life than I am comfortable giving them credit for. Think about it: It's 2005 and you're 30. You go back in time 15 years so it is 1990, a time that has already happened, so that means that in the past you were there which means that in the future you have to go back there because once something has happened it can't unhappen. And it is very circular. And I don't know if I am explaining myself properly or even explaining why I find it problematic but I do.

I also think that if I was Clare I would hate to have known who I was going to marry so early. To not really have a choice in the matter, because here is this guy coming from the future who says that he is married to you. So how do you know that if Henry hadn't been a time traveller that if/when she met him in the future she still would have loved him? It can be assumed that she loved him because he came back in time and told her that she did in the future and that might be fair and good. I guess I just wonder how you can be sure that she ended up with Henry for the right reasons. Not that I necessarily know what the right reasons are. But how do you know? It's such an irrational question and I've been told that you just have to have faith, and you just know and other such unsatisfactory answers. And I find it strange that I am making such a huge deal out of it because usually I am not the black & white girl and am totally ok with shades of grey but when it comes to matters of the heart I seem to want everything to be factual and straightforward when by its' very nature love is not like that. And I know this but I am having a hard time accepting it and it was one of the points of the story that kind of drove me crazy. Because maybe she should have dated Gomez or some other guy that didn't get mentioned and maybe they would have made her as happy as Henry did. If not happier because they wouldn't have been disappearing all the time.