The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
I always find it somewhat difficult to write about something I actually really enjoy. It is so much easier to be negatively critical than it is to shower an abundance of praise on something. And this, The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, is a thoroughly enjoying read.
I won’t pretend I wasn’t without my reservations before I started reading the book; I always am when approaching something so far outside of my strictly 18th/19th century comfort zone, but I’d bought the novel on recommendation from a friend of my Mum’s whose daughter loves this book, and I genuinely was pleasantly surprised.
What I found particularly wonderful about this novel is that even though the plot is so far-reaching in that we all know full well it could never actually happen, Niffenegger’s written style and descriptions and the attention paid to time, date, place etc (especially the short extract dated September 11th, 2001), made this novel seem as realist in genre and is as much of a detailed and subjective social commentary as some of the “classic” 19th century realism I had forced on me during university that I soon realised I loathed with a passion. So why do I love Audrey Niffenegger’s novel so much?
As you may have read previously, among my favourite novels are Wuthering Heights, Dracula, and Jane Eyre. These all have something rather notable in common with Niffenegger’s infinitely more contemporary novel. The plots of all four novels are something that, in writing, seem like something completely feasible and ordinary, but the subject matter, when thought about, is so outrageous that it could never, not even with the best will in the world, be true. Time travellers are no more real than vampires, and are no more likely to come into existance than it is likely that one will find their true love in a millionaire with a vast and extravagant estate. The really fantastic thing about these novels that gives them the edge, plot-wise, over the traditional realist 19th century dross of writers like Charles Dickens and George Elliot, and that really kept me hooked, is the way in which the writers respectively blend realism and fantasy; I could still relate to the emotions portrayed by the key protagonists; the feeling of being so hopelessly in love you feel that someone is more yourself than you are, the feelings of loss, of grieving, of despair, while retaining the knowledge that whatever the characters of the novels go through can never be more than fiction. I am safe from the world of time travellers and vampires that will make me fall in love with them and then break my heart.
But the Time Traveler’s wife is not simply a plotful masterpiece.
Not many novels can successfully carry an explicitly split-narrative format, so The Time Traveler’s Wife is definitely among the minority. Where most novels of this type use two voices (or more) to repeat the same events from different perspectives (and where I would lose interest incredibly rapidly), Niffenegger very rarely describes the same event using both Clare and Henry’s voices. Nothing is repeated. What a refreshing change. The individual narratives of Clare and Henry are both so profoundly expressed that I was gripped right from the prologue and had to force myself to take my time over reading this book so I could savour every moment of the novel and really, really enjoy it.
More than anything, it was the deliberate lack of linear chronology throughout the novel that it special for me. I enjoyed the way there were things that Clare knew that Henry didn’t and vice versa, the way in which Clare and Henry’s individual narratives entwined to provide the reader with the full account of an event, even though this may come at a completely unexpected point of the novel; for example, we only find out that Henry was present at Ingrid’s suicide at the very end, even though, chronologically, she died quite near the beginning of the novel.
The final point of particular pleasure I drew from this novel (well, not the final, but the last one I will write about here), is the casual interspersion of quotes from poems throughout history, literary references, discussion of art, theatre, music, etc. It made the novel seem to me as though it was far more, in terms of the arts, culturally aware, and consequently appeared to be a true part of the history of the arts, particularly literature, in its awareness and immersion within them. The poetry quoted throughout the novel is simply stunning, and although Niffenegger cannot take the credit for work produced by others, one has to hand it to her for finding and including work that is so beautifully in keeping with the plot and themes that run throughout the novel.
The one thing that concerns me about this novel is that the story of Alba, Clare and Henry’s time-travelling daughter, is left open-ended and could be told as a sequel to The Time Traveler’s Wife. This novel, as it is, is so perfect, it needs nothing further. Niffenegger, despite Henry’s death, still allows him and Clare to have their happy ending (another wonderful bonus of fiction - everyone gets their happy ending). The novel is conclusive and beautiful as it is. A sequel, no matter how well written, would severely detract from the charm of this one. A novel like this stands apart from its shelf-mates, and should stand alone as a single piece, not as part of a series.
And, in all honesty, nor do I find myself especially compelled to read any more of Niffenegger’s work. The Time Traveler’s Wife has proven such a joy to read for me that I think to find it is part of the same ilk as the rest of her work would destroy most of the pleasure I have derived from it.
So there you have it. A positive review well deserved by an absolute gem of a novel.
Niffenegger, Audrey [2004] The Time Traveler’s Wife (2005) London: Vintage
