The Time Traveler's Wife

 Wow. I kept thinking about what to say as an introduction to this post but the only word that kept coming to mind was: Wow. This novel, The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, is a complete love affair/ time traveling powerhouse. I knew immediately that I would love this book because the excerpt before the first chapter was from Rainer Maria Rilke...it was clearly meant to be a favorite. I would also like to begin this post by stating that there are not enough good things I can say about this book and I am absolutely sure that nothing I can say will in any way do it justice. You simply must read it.

  This novel tells the story of Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire as they spend their lives together and apart. Henry (an intelligent, sometimes volatile time traveler) meets Clare (a spirited and extremely patient artist) when he is 28 and she is 20; whereas Clare meets Henry when he is 36 and she is 6. This may sound confusing, and it is, but after you adjust to the discontinuity the resulting story is an immensely powerful journey that is so gripping it makes longing and separation seem somehow appealing.

Henry is a "Chrono Impaired" individual that has no control over where or when he travels. He compares it to epilepsy, in that stress and flashing lights can often prompt these bouts of travel. Things like sex, meditation, and running help him to stay rooted in the present. Henry is unable to take anything with him when he travels so he always end up at his destination stark naked. As you can imagine, this makes things quite difficult and results in Henry's great ability to lie, steal, and run for his life.

Clare, on the other hand, seems to be the most patient and understanding woman in the world. Though it is frustrating for her, she handles being continuously left behind with such security and grace that it makes you wonder how she manages to live this way her entire life. Clare is a character of such strength and spirit, it is almost impossible to not love and admire her.

This dazzling novel will leave you completely entranced and wondering, "Why is love intensified by absence?" The following two excerpts were my favorite from the book and I feel as though they encompass the ideas and feelings behind each moment of this book.

Oh not because happiness exists,

that too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss.

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here

apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way

keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.

...Ah, but what can we take along

into that other realm? Not the art of looking,

which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.

The sufferings, then. And, above all, the heaviness,

and the long experience of love,--just what is wholly

unsayable.

                                             --from The Ninth Duino Elegy,

                                                             Rainer Maria Rilke

"What is it? My dear?"

"Ah, how can we bear it?"

"Bear what?"

"This. For so short a time. How can we sleep this time away?"

"We can be quiet together, and pretend--since it is only the beginning--that we have all the time in the world."

"And every day we shall have less. And then none."

"Would you rather, therefore, have had nothing at all?"

"No. This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere."

                                  --A.S. Byatt, Possession