Chaos Attraction

The Time Traveler's Wife

2003-12-30, 9:17 p.m.

Not that much to talk about today, relatively speaking. Dave starts working full-time on Saturday. We went out for awhile and I got all the stuff I had wanted for Christmas and didn't get, basically. I found the moon calendar I'd wanted for months, but waited to buy half-price. (They'd run out of them in my town.) I got the new copy of Bust. I found Firefly and got it, which made me happy. And finishing off the day, we went over to that apartment and WOW, it has been VASTLY improved, thank the gods. Didn't even reek any more! Yay, because we're probably supposed to spend New Year's there.

Anyway, just to give you more to read, I'm going to do a quick rundown of my new favorite book that I got for the holidays, The Time Traveler's Wife. (Spoiler space is given when appropriate at the bottom.)

Oh wow. This may be my personal Best Book Ever. Holy damn, this is good. Would that I could EVER write something as gripping and fascinating and romantic as this. Hell, that's every writer's dream, to come up with something like this. The Holy Grail. I was messed up for hours after reading it, and then started reading it again. I bet this one becomes a movie, and I'd run to see it. Plus you have to admire how the author manages to handle the subject matter without getting utterly confused and having the readers manage to keep up with what's going on.

Our hero, Henry, has a random disease. Instead of having an epileptic fit or a schizophrenic episode when stressed or confronted with flashing lights, he suddenly time travels, naked, to God knows when or where, for God knows how long. Sometimes he goes to random places, sometimes he goes to his own past or his wife's, sometimes he can jump ahead to the future. Naturally, he's had to develop skills like thievery, lockpicking, pickpocketing, fighting, and other skills to cope with being suddenly naked in a strange location. (Fortunately, he can teach himself. Literally.) He has no control over it, and while there's the occasional blessing that comes from it, normally it's a whopping pain in the ass.

Henry's future wife, Clare, has known him longer than he's known her. He's been appearing naked in her favorite hideout spot since she was six, and she's kind of always known that they're going to get together. She's delighted to finally meet him in her and his present life when she turns 20. They eventually marry and are happy, but then Clare wants a baby, and having a time-traveling embryo that'll survive to babyhood is a struggle...

It's fascinating. While I occasionally would have a quibble with one or two things (if you're wondering what I mean, scroll down...), it's simply very, very good. Hell, I had a hint going in there'd be something about the end that I wouldn't like, and I still kept on reading and would read it again. For me, that's saying something.

Big fat fucking WOW.

Okay, as for the quibble...it's a spoiler, so read at your own risk and don't say I didn't warn you...

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I am extremely uneasy at the idea of a time-traveling female (Henry and Claire finally have a daughter). Think about it, what happens when she grows up and a naked teenage girl pops out of nowhere around a bunch of guys? She'd be raped in like two seconds, and I don't know how much fighting/self-defense she could learn all the time. And even worse, what if she got pregnant and managed to carry a baby to term? If stress makes you time travel, when she went into labor she'd be instantly traveling to God knows when, naked and about to drop a kid God knows where. Yikes yikes yikes. I have to wonder what the author was thinking to make him have a girl. Though it's hinted at that there might be some kind of help for her if she wishes to take advantage of it and give up time traveling, so who knows.


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