THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE

The Time Traveler’s Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
Hardback $25.00
MacAdam/Cage 2003
519 pages
ISBN 1931561648

When an author writes in the science fiction genre, their story needs to be believable from the scientific point-of-view. Everyday knowledge does not include time travel as of yet, but we have had some theories of time that have yet to be either proved or disproved.

In The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffennegger the sequencing of the story is through the wife, Clare. Even with this being the stabilizing factor, the plot jumps all over in reference to time, making it sometimes confusing. This was done on purpose so that we would understand the time traveling husband and his thought process. Sometimes though, it just didn’t make sense.

This is a love story of Henry, the time traveler, and his non-time traveling wife, Clare. The author changes the events in the story by alternating sections from each of their own perspectives. Fortunately, at the beginning of each section the ages of the Clare and Henry are stated which assists the reader in visualizing their interactions.

“This is the story of Clare, a beautiful art student, and Henry, an adventuresome librarian, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and married when Clare was twenty-three and Henry thirty-one. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder; periodically his genetic clock resects and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity from his life, past and future.”

The time traveling for Henry is not within his control and is triggered by stress. Henry is able to go back to participate or to observe many of the previous events throughout his life. For instance, he has observed his mother before he was born so that he would know her especially since she died traumatically early in his life. The down side to the time traveling is that Henry can’t control it and when he arrives at the new time and place; his clothes have not traveled with him. Henry consequently has clothes stashed in numerous places from his past and in his present life.

For logical reasons, Henry does not drive and has never ridden in a plane. He is fearful of what would happen if he disappeared while driving a car. The car could be in motion with no driver. If he rode on an airplane, the time traveling from the plane wouldn’t be a problem, but what if he time traveled back to the plane. Would he be on the plane or at the place the plane was or should be?

Also, there is the issue of time traveling into the future, what can or should you tell your wife when you return. Should you change the course of history?

Henry finally finds a doctor that will work with him and attempt to control his time travel through medication. The doctor even discovers how to have mice travel in time through altering the DNA of the mice. Also, he knows that his wife wants to have a baby, and unfortunately the fetuses tend to be easily miscarried due to Henry’s DNA.

I was bothered about an incident in the book with the time traveling. Henry always before has revisited events from his past and the problem at a parking garage and inside the cage which were not events in Henry’s past, but become major events in his life.

Also, time theory always mandated that only one substance could occupy a space at one time. Not being a physicist, this fictionalized time travel frequently has Henry as being involved at the event and other Henry’s of various ages, observing.

Of course, this is fiction. If the author wants multiple Henry’s throughout his life, then the author can write it that way.

The book was enjoyable, at times disturbing, and fast-paced especially the last half. I felt the book to be time displaced in that the ending read as a forced completion to a story that did not really match the rest of the story.