If I could time travel, I would journey back to November 1,
2012, sometime after 10pm, when I was laying in bed next to my husband (who was
inevitably reading a yellow Math book. . . .boring). I flipped to the first page of The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger and read “CLARE: It’s hard
being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he’s
okay. It’s hard to be the one who stays.”
This was the moment the novel grabbed my
heart and pulled on my romantic nerves.
I am, by definition, a sucker for a good love story and thus,
have the tendency to instantly fall in love with all gorgeous lead male
characters. However, The Time Traveler’s Wife might, perhaps,
be the best love story I’ve encountered in a really long time (excluding my
own, of course). Perhaps it’s merely
the idea of time travel, or the real-life characters (minus the time traveling
bit) with real-life problems that drew me in so quickly. Whatever it was, this novel mesmerized
me and brought me pure joy intertwined with tangible moments of sadness.
The lead male, Henry, is a librarian (could it get any
better than that?). In addition to
his dashing good looks, Henry also possesses a peculiar ability to travel through
time. Clare, at a very young age,
meets her future husband. And by
future, I mean, she meets the Henry from the future who in his present is
married to future Clare (it’s not nearly confusing as it sounds, I promise). And so the tale begins of two people
destined to love each other.
Clare, the artist, is in a constant act of waiting: waiting for Henry to
return, wondering if Henry will suddenly disappear, will they have a family,
will Henry be there to participate?
The love between Henry and Clare is so strong, so deep that it surpasses
all space-time continuums.
I truly loved this book and it’s one that I could reread and
reread (if I didn’t have so many other books on my to-read list). But there’s just one thing that
bothered me (skip this paragraph if you want to be completely enthralled by the
book; read on if you want to know one minor detail that irked me). I am a scientist and I am acutely aware
of the complexities of human biology, which contributes to the slow speed of
scientific progress. So when Henry
visits a geneticist to explore the biology behind time travel, and the
geneticist quickly isolated the ONE gene responsible and generated knockout
mice that could also time travel, I was immediately skeptical. Time traveling mice? Okay, cool, but really? Who funded such outrageous
investigations? Time travel makes
for a great lover story, but in reality, I doubt very much it could actually
happen. And by mutation of a
single gene? How many genes need to be altered for tumor progression? I can
tell you that it’s many more than one. Okay, I’ll move on.
I know Hollywood cashed in on this great story, but I am
still reveling in the great writing and emotions evoked by Niffenegger’s novel
that I haven’t watched the movie . . . yet. I will, soon. I
want to share this story with my very own time traveler. You know that same yellow math-book-reading
nerd of guy I snagged? On
occasion, he pulls out some truly romantic lines. While I regaled him with how
much I love this book, he replied with “I want to be your time traveler”. Yes, dear, you can be my time traveler;
I love you too.
