Harcourt Books, 2003 - Cover Photograph by Tim Hetherington, Cover Design by Kelly Eismann
BOOKS READ 25: THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE
Last summer, I had only just heard about this book. It was because of a terrible movie and because of a boyfriend at the time. Said boyfriend really liked the book, and I was quite surprised because my notions of the book stemmed entirely from the trailers for the movie, which made it seemed like a very…feminine romance movie. It made said boyfriend at the time more attractive because it seemed like he wasn’t afraid to like something that could be regarded as chick lit/flick. Every time the trailer came on tv (get ready to groan at the cheesiness here), I always thought of him and it made me love (or so I thought, I am getting to this) the movie (the idea of course) and really (REALLY) like him.
The movie is so shitty.
I tried to justify that it was OKAY because it had Broken Social Scene playing a cover of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. And also because my ex-boyfriend also said it was terrible, I felt like since I had invested so much emotion into this movie beforehand, that it was only right to try to defend it. But no, the movie was definitely not okay.
Needless to say, my ideas of the novel being potentially great and my ex-boyfriend’s taste was kind of questioned.
A year later I read the book.
I instantly loved it. The way the characters interacted with each other, right down to the smallest action, it was something that I could imagine and easily fall in love with and long for. Then for some reason, more than halfway through, I decided to look up the Wikipedia page for this book, and I had learned that Niffenegger had so many failed relationships that she figured if she couldn’t have the perfect guy, she’d make him up.
It never occurred to me while reading the first half of this book that there is no way a guy like Henry DeTamble (the main character in this romance) could ever exist. I know, it’s a book, a book of fiction, with an element of science fiction no less, but I had been reading dreamily along thinking that someone like him did exist and was possible to find. It was so easy to believe. Or maybe I just really wanted to.
To learn that he was a solution to someone’s failed love life was a bit disheartening.
Knowing all this though, I was still crying in the parts where you would be expected to cry, and still very much affected by the writing.
I don’t know how badly I want stuff like this to be real that I have blind faith, or if I believe in the possibility of the love that exists in this book because I’ve seen and felt true evidence of it.
Something to find out.
And if it happens, I’ll make sure to tell you all about it.
Flaws and all.
