I'm partial to a good old sentimental weepy, and Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife is a perfect specimen of that genre. Like the protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut's much more meaningful Slaughterhouse Five, one of the main characters here, Henry, is unstuck in time. Since he was five years old, Henry has randomly time traveled to various points in his past or future, arriving naked, cold, and confused (and ultimately reverting to his "main" life). Fortunately--as the title indicates--the time traveling Henry quickly finds a soulmate, Clare, who he first meets when he's middle aged and she's only six. (Which is kind of gross.) They fall in love, though on very different schedules, and the rest of the book concerns how their relationship copes with Henry's peculiar affliction.

Niffenegger is a superb writer. The Time Traveler's Wife doesn't break any new ground on literary style, but it is silkily written and addictively readable. I really can't emphasize how weirdly arresting Niffenegger's writing is: It is one of the very few books I have ever just casually picked up in a bookstore--an airport bookstore, at that--and felt compelled to buy after skimming a few pages.

The book is also ingeniously plotted. The story alternates between Henry's and Clare's viewpoints, but it adheres to no one timeline. Sometimes, it follows Henry through a jump; sometimes, it leaps to a totally unrelated jump; and sometimes it stays behind with Clare, the long-suffering wife. Things get even more confusing because Henry sometimes meets multiple versions of himself, so the same event could be told at several different points, but somehow Niffenegger keeps it all together.

Somehow, all this fractured narrative coalesces into a fascinating plot. It helps that Niffenegger is a master at building up a sense of dread. For all the joy that is noisily celebrated in this novel, a pall quickly settles, primarily around a friend named Gomez and Henry's disturbing foreknowledge. As a result, the book never feels too treacly. Henry's and Clare's relationship is just about perfect, but they live in a troubled world, and Niffenegger doesn't let us forget that.

Oh sure, The Time Traveler's Wife has got its share of problems: Henry's time traveling isn't treated with any real rigor, and the relationship between Henry and Clare can sometimes be a little too cute (I mentally barfed when Clare revealed that they had so much fantastic sex that it was starting to hurt--please). And is the story just a wee bit melodramatic? Perhaps I should quote from the very first two page:

Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow?

Why, Henry, why?!!! *sob* So yes, it's melodramatic, and sappy, and emotionally manipulative. But who cares, because it works. If I were a man given to crying (which I am not), I would be bawling all over this book--and especially at its purplest passages, like the one quoted above. The Time Traveler's Wife isn't deep. But it made me happy, it made me sad, it made me care. And that's all that I need.

Copyright © 2005 Steven Wu