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Time Traveler's Wife Question

post #1 of 23
9/14/07 at 4:35pm
Thread Starter 
So from the female authors thread, I read Audrey Nifenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife...great book...but I can't reconcile something. Minor spoilers? So don't read ahead if you haven't read the book and are planning to:

Henry first meets Clare when she's a little girl, and she has no idea who he is. Clare first meets Henry when he's in his twenties, and he has no idea who she is. Clare tells Henry that they fall in love, get married, so Henry starts to "date" her, even breaking up with his current girlfriend in the process. As they get older, Henry starts to go back in time and meet Clare as a little kid.

So from my understanding chronologically, Henry never has any real reason to go back into time to visit Clare other than the fact that he knows she is his future wife. Which is born from him meeting Clare in his twenties, which is from him going back into time.

So I guess my issue is, they never fall in love naturally. Every time they meet each other, one of them knows they are SUPPOSED to fall in love with the other. Doesn't this kind of corrupt the nature of their relationship? It's always a bit of a conspiracy on one side, and there's no explanation later as to why Henry starts to go back into time to be with Clare? I can't imagine the basis of their love is a little girl falling in love with a 40 year old man?

Any views?
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post #2 of 23
9/14/07 at 4:48pm
He doesn't choose when he goes back in time, or to where he goes back in time. He doesn't go back in time just to tell her, his body just sends him there and he ends up telling her.

No they never fall in love naturally - the book is essentially a completely non-traditional love story. Including how they meet.
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post #3 of 23
9/14/07 at 4:51pm
Chronologically speaking (well, from his point of view) the first time he meets Clare is when she introduces herself to him in the library when she's in her twenties. He then goes back in time when he's older to visit her as a child, which of course is why she knows him when she meets him. He starts going back for a reason, I thought. Aren't they having marital problems in his present when he first visits her as a child?

Anyway, yeah, the causality is kind of circular, which is kind of a problem with a lot of time travel stories. And yeah, I think you're right about the effect it has on the relationship and it's one of the reasons I think the novel doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
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post #4 of 23
9/14/07 at 4:52pm
I think you're missing the point of the book, which is the idea of pre-destination. They fall in love with each other because they were meant to, it's as simple as that.
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post #5 of 23
9/14/07 at 4:55pm
*magical delay double post
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post #6 of 23
9/14/07 at 4:55pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrMushnik
Anyway, yeah, the causality is kind of circular, which is kind of a problem with a lot of time travel stories. And yeah, I think you're right about the effect it has on the relationship and it's one of the reasons I think the novel doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
Yeah, as I was reading it I loved it. But the more I think about it, the more I want to look at it as a great love story but realize this causality snag is what's keeping me from that.

I understand the pre-destination argument, and I guess you could say from Henry's pov he had no control and went back to Clare b/c he was meant to...and Clare chose to love him, both as a child and as a woman, because she wanted to..both sides of the argument.

But it still bothers me. *shrug*
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post #7 of 23
9/14/07 at 5:02pm
Honestly, it's not meant to be over-analyzed. The whole love angle appeals a LOT to women, I've found, as the idea of him being sort of like an imaginary friend when she was a child, but then he's there to help her through puberty, and finally she finds him as an adult. I don't exactly get it either, but it seems to work for them.
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post #8 of 23
9/14/07 at 5:11pm
Also, and sorry if this becomes a double-post, but does anyone else think the new show "Journey Man" looks suspiciously like it borrows quite a bit from The Time Traveler's Wife? I mean, he gains an uncontrollable time-traveling power later in life, seems to be put in situations where his skills are necessary, and has a wife that he possibly encounters at different stages in her life.
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post #9 of 23
9/14/07 at 5:15pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xevo
Also, and sorry if this becomes a double-post, but does anyone else think the new show "Journey Man" looks suspiciously like it borrows quite a bit from The Time Traveler's Wife? I mean, he gains an uncontrollable time-traveling power later in life, seems to be put in situations where his skills are necessary, and has a wife that he possibly encounters at different stages in her life.
Actually, I saw a commercial for that show and thought exactly the same thing.
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post #10 of 23
9/14/07 at 6:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xevo
Honestly, it's not meant to be over-analyzed. The whole love angle appeals a LOT to women, I've found, as the idea of him being sort of like an imaginary friend when she was a child, but then he's there to help her through puberty, and finally she finds him as an adult. I don't exactly get it either, but it seems to work for them.
Ummm... it's a love story. The whole love angle pretty much has to appeal to anyone who likes the book. It's okay, Xevo. It doesn't make you a pussy.

Here's another paradox to noodle, though:

How does young Henry learn to pick locks? His older self goes back in time to teach him. How did his older self learn how to pick locks? He was taught by his older self when he was young Henry.

For some reason, that one messes with me even more than the relationship with Claire. There's something transcendent about the love angle that makes the paradox easy to swallow for me. But acquired knowledge that seemingly comes from nowhere and is then transmitted through time? That hurts my brain.
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post #11 of 23
9/14/07 at 6:44pm
Despite the fact that Henry's time travel is literal in the story, I chose to read the paradox of Henry & Claire's relationship as the way that Niffenegger captured how a relationship can feel - the sense that one sometimes cannot shake of having known the person forever, even if you only met them as an adult.
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post #12 of 23
9/14/07 at 7:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveB
Ummm... it's a love story. The whole love angle pretty much has to appeal to anyone who likes the book. It's okay, Xevo. It doesn't make you a pussy.
I liked the love story, I'm just saying I don't exactly buy that their relationship is very strong, outside of the pre-destination that they had to be together.
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post #13 of 23
9/14/07 at 8:03pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xevo
I think you're missing the point of the book, which is the idea of pre-destination. They fall in love with each other because they were meant to, it's as simple as that.
Wow! You're even better than Cliff's Notes!

I don't think TTTW is a great book. I think it's pretty damn good, but Niffenegger is sometimes an awkward or clunky writer. That being said, I can't help but laugh at you reducing a 500 page novel to "it's about predestination!" Especially when you lace that simplification with a tone of superiority.

Xevo on Invisible Man: "It's about how being black is hard!"
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post #14 of 23
9/14/07 at 8:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dannychico
Xevo on Invisible Man: "It's about how being black is hard!"
No way dude, that was about a guy whose experiment went wrong and he totally became invisible! Also, Hollow Man.
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post #15 of 23
9/14/07 at 11:16pm
I always gathered that when Clare meets him as an adult she's in love with him but realizes that this man is not the man she fell in love with. As they both get older Henry eventually blossoms into the man she did fall in love with and so essentially she falls in love with him all over again, and as for Henry he's fallen in love with Clare as he gets older as well.

I always thought the book was a study into how marriages work through such difficulties and complications.
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post #16 of 23
9/15/07 at 11:49am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dannychico
I don't think TTTW is a great book. I think it's pretty damn good, but Niffenegger is sometimes an awkward or clunky writer.
I've seen this argument put forward elsewhere, but I've never seen it very well backed-up. I'm generally sort of hyper-aware of bad writing, and, while there's always the possibility that I was so taken with the character development and general concept of the novel that I missed the awkward writing, I've gotta ask for some examples of this. It's written in the voices of two articulate, educated types, and I never got the vibe that these voices didn't ring true. It's simply written, but not clunkily written.

I'll concede that the characters who populate her world are occasionally cultured slightly beyond belief (Claire's sister rocks the Terry Riley at her church's Christmas Eve service; Claire, Henry, and their friends are all so socially aware that they can throw down economic theory and history on the fly during that whacked-out game of Monopoly), but that's not "writing," as much as characterization. And it's also not all that absurd, just a little weird.
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post #17 of 23
9/15/07 at 2:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xevo
No way dude, that was about a guy whose experiment went wrong and he totally became invisible! Also, Hollow Man.
Ok, you're totally back in my favor.
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post #18 of 23
9/15/07 at 2:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveB
I've seen this argument put forward elsewhere, but I've never seen it very well backed-up. I'm generally sort of hyper-aware of bad writing, and, while there's always the possibility that I was so taken with the character development and general concept of the novel that I missed the awkward writing, I've gotta ask for some examples of this.
Honestly it was just the general feeling I took away after finishing it. If I had been taking notes, I surely would have some specifics for you, but at this point I don't have any interest in digging back through it to look for the (admittedly few) stilted passages. Perhaps if I had any ill will toward the book I would make the effort, but like I said, I really like it.
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post #19 of 23
10/7/07 at 3:51pm
I think the one thing I could have done without was how oversexed the couple is. I get it. They fuck like bunnies. Does this factor into the story any? Over all a great read and if the movie is even close to what the book delivers, then we're in for a treat.
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post #20 of 23
8/18/08 at 11:34am
i was just thinking how the hell do you even more this into a movie, a mini-series would work best. But I guess we'll find out in December
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post #21 of 23
8/18/08 at 12:35pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Venkman View Post
i was just thinking how the hell do you even more this into a movie, a mini-series would work best. But I guess we'll find out in December
I think it should fit pretty nicely into a movie, length-wise. I'm more concerned about it carrying over tonally.

It would be very easy to turn this into a run-of-the-mill weepie with some sf elements. Hopefully, the fractured nature of the narrative will be maintained, as well as the sharp characterizations - in the book, Henry and Claire have smart, distinct personalities (and sex lives - I consider that bit of characterization quite important in establishing that they're not one of those unrealistically chaste married couples that so often populate Hollywood movies) that could easily get flattened out in an effort to make the love story more appealing to the masses.
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post #22 of 23
8/19/08 at 3:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveB View Post
How does young Henry learn to pick locks? His older self goes back in time to teach him. How did his older self learn how to pick locks? He was taught by his older self when he was young Henry.
I don't get into time travel discussions anymore, but this is solved by the idea that Older Henry always taught younger Henry, and that neither truly came before the other; they only exist with each other.

I think anyone who enjoys a novel sees the novel best expressed through the mini-series. That way, all the little plot angles and character quirks can be covered. As DaveB was saying, though, this book is just about perfect at an hour forty-five.
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post #23 of 23
8/19/08 at 3:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Guttenberg Fan Club View Post
I don't get into time travel discussions anymore, but this is solved by the idea that Older Henry always taught younger Henry, and that neither truly came before the other; they only exist with each other.
Oh, I don't think it's something that necessarily needs explanation - no matter what, you'll have an impossible explanation for an impossible phenomenon. It's just that picking locks is so specific a skill that the paradox messes with me more than the paradox inherent in the causality of the relationship. I don't consider it a "mistake" by Niffenegger, but rather a weird little thing that she intentionally included for pondering. It's neat.

Quote:
I think anyone who enjoys a novel sees the novel best expressed through the mini-series. That way, all the little plot angles and character quirks can be covered. As DaveB was saying, though, this book is just about perfect at an hour forty-five.
Yeah, I think you have to account for book pacing vs. movie pacing. Sometimes, the right facial expression or line delivery can serve the same purpose as a page's worth of internal monologue. This goes double for scenery descriptions, etc.
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