In my previous post, I wrote about Inferno by Dan Brown, a book that has inspired or influenced my own novel in some way. When I finished that, I began another re-read of perhaps one of my favorite books of all time: The Time Traveler’s Wife.
I starting reading solely for enjoyment sometime in college, and I’ve been consistent about it over the last 20 years. Back in 2008, when I was still studying in Europe, a friend of mine lent me her copy of The Time Traveler’s Wife, and I could not put it down. I fell in love with it immediately upon finishing, yet it took me 17 years to finally revisit one of my favorite love stories ever written.
The novel is about a man named Henry Detamble with a disease that causes him to involuntarily move forward or backward in time. He cannot control when it happens or where in time he’ll end up. The first time Clare meets Henry is when she’s a young girl and he tells her they’re married in the future. She doesn’t believe he can time travel at first until he suddenly disappears right in front of her. Throughout her childhood, she meets Henry in the clearing at different stages of his life, sometimes appearing younger, sometimes older. Eventually, Clare finally meets Henry in the present and they fall in love.
Those are just the broad strokes. Since this novel deals with time travel, the plot is all over the place, jumping forward and backward in time a lot, revealing the struggles and fears Clare experiences every time Henry randomly disappears. Sometimes he’s only gone for a few minutes, and other times he’s gone for days. But he always comes back. Or does he?
The story is told in first person, switching between Clare and Henry throughout the novel, so the reader gets to experience firsthand what the characters are going through. It can be disorienting at times because most novels written in first person focus solely on the main character. Though my own novel is written in third person, I switch between characters all the time, and The Time Traveler’s Wife was one of the inspirations behind that choice.
Probably the biggest inspiration I drew from this novel is that it’s a love story. My original idea for my novel was not a love story. I knew I wanted to write about a character who inherits strange powers, but after reading The Time Traveler’s Wife, it inspired me to change up my novel completely. Strange powers are still central to the story, only this time, the main character having abilities complicates their relationship with the person they love, similar to Clare and Henry’s situation in The Time Traveler’s Wife. If I hadn’t read that novel, my own story would be wildly different. And honestly, I think the novel is much better for it.
Since it’s publication, The Time Traveler’s Wife has been adapted into a film and a short-lived television series. The film starred Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams. The latter, in my opinion, was perfectly cast for the role of Clare. For Henry, I was not as thrilled. However, I thought they were both fine in the movie, even though it fell flat. There’s a lot that happens in the novel, so I’m not surprised the movie didn’t quite bring it home. The TV series, on the other hand, I thought was cast very well, with Theo James and Rose Leslie playing Henry and Clare. The show ended up being worse than the movie and when the first season ended, it got canceled shortly after. Not only that, when the show first aired, I expected it to be a miniseries, which would have perfectly encapsulated the entire novel’s events. However, when the first season didn’t end where the novel did, I just knew it would be canceled. Why drag out one novel over the course of several seasons? It just makes no sense to me.
A lot of book reviews I read recently were negative, which surprised me. I’ll admit, the writing did get confusing at times, but that’s expected when you’re telling a non-linear story. I still loved it, though, after reading it a second time, and it reminded me of why I starting writing my own novel in the first place. It’s also one of a handful of novels that I always recommend to people, especially if they’ve never read it. These two characters are so devoted and in love with one another, you can’t help but root for them. I hope that someday my novel will illicit the same reactions.
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