The Time Traveller's Wife

I had this plan. I was going to read one hundred pages of The Time Traveller's Wife this afternoon, then write. Before I knew it, it was page one hundred and fourteen. I forced myself to stop and do some novel planning, then I read more. Then I made dinner, and read more. And then I kept reading, freezing, in the semi-dark in an empty living room with everyone else gone to bed because I could not put that book down.

I could, of course, dissect this story and analyse it. It's science fiction, it's first-person present tense from two viewpoints, it's got a timeline that would give Steven Moffat headaches, etcetera. Audrey Niffenegger is a master of foreshadowing, and it shows. It has some absolutely genius metaphors and similes, a plot that must have taken hours to plan, and an absolutely gutwrenching last one hundred pages. I haven't cried over a book since Good Wives when I was twelve, but this time I came pretty close. But I'm not going to pull it apart and discuss it in a freshman essay, because I think that would spoil it.

Like all books, however, it wasn't perfect. The quotes and literary allusions got very tedious, particularly since I only understood about a third. I skimread all the long arty descriptive paragraphs about how Clare does ... whatever it is she does with paper that everyone goes on about. Also, as a fan of the relatively family-friendly movie adaptation (saw it about six months ago), I was rather shocked at the startling quantity of sex scenes and foul language. Or perhaps my memory is just blocking those parts of the film out. I might have to watch it again.

I can see, frankly, why The Time Traveller's Wife is so insanely popular. It deserves to be a modern classic, that's for sure. I wonder if, were I to travel right now to 2311, I would find it in the classics section of the library like a Shakespeare? Possibly. Only time will tell.