The Time Traveler's Wife

This will be our last look at The Time Traveler's Wife, which I finished last night. And when I say I finished it, I mean I bawled my way through the last 20 pages or so.

I can't remember the last time a book made me actually cry, or if a book has ever made me cry so hard.

And that's a good thing!

The book is fantastic. It's realistic, it's emotional, it's incredibly well-constructed and it flows so nicely that you can get lost in it for hours and feel as though no time at all has passed. Clare and Henry are some of the best characters I have come across in quite some time.

And that's what I want to focus on for the rest of this post: Characters.

They're real people. I don't mean that literally, of course, but in a literary sense, they are so real they might as well be flesh and blood. They are flawed -deeply, secretly and at times embarrassingly flawed. They lie, they hurt each other, they fight and they make mistakes.

That is one of the golden parts of this book. Clare and Henry are more passionately in love -and in odder circumstance -than many other characters in modern novels, but their relationship is still as fraught as any other real life relationship. They have Henry's chrono-displacement to worry about, but they also have "normal" problems like trying to have a baby, dealing with a small living space, difficult family relationships, illness, silly little fights over who's going to vacuum (they hire a cleaning service).

Those are the things, as much as the oddity of Henry's condition, that readers are going to take away from this story. They are the things that make The Time Traveler's Wife such a powerful read.

Writers, we hear all the time that our characters must be believable, and that point hits home so clearly in this book. If Clare and Henry fit together easily all the time, or if their families were stereotypically normal -or predictably flawed -this book would not pack the punch that it does.

I don't want to give away any spoilers, but I will say this: even if the book had ended differently than it had, and it ends on an amazingly poignant note, I still would have cried. I still would have put it down feeling slightly dazed by the writing. I would still be looking very closely at my own writing for the emotional power I found here.

Questions

What were your perceptions of the characters in this book?
Writers, how do you achieve emotional complexity without detracting from your plot or goals?
What did you think of the rest of the book?

Words, words, words.

Because it's David Bowie as Jareth. And because I could.

Well, here I am -back from the birthday high of yesterday. It was an excellent day. Presents were opened (awesome, awesome presents, I should add), coffee was had and dinner was consumed -followed by dessert and more coffee. It was a good year to turn 20. I got a new coffeemaker for school when we did Festivus with the Shoemaker clan-along with Coraline, candles and some blank books to write in-so you know it's a good day when that happens. Coffeemaker (and coffee to go with it), money for books (remember The Library at Night? I'm still reading that, actually -slow going right now because I've been leaving the house more often. Weird.), a thing to sit my Mac on so it stops burning my legs (I actually have what appears to be a burn mark on my left leg from using my extremely hot laptop for long periods of time. No joke), a t-shirt that says "Han Shot First" (he totally did) and a game called Literati, which will be opened and played with great gusto at some point today.

Okay, enough of me being as excited as a little kid about all of my neat gadgety and/or papery presents, on to my next item of interest. Last night, as a mental change from reading The Library at Night, I started reading my copy of The Time Traveler's Wife. I felt that was fitting, since the movie came out yesterday and Eric Bana is in it. Yummy. I will see the movie based on him alone, whether or not I like the book. However, and this is an early judgment since I read 6 pages before I fell asleep, I think I'm going to like it. Niffenegger's clear prose and familiar yet elegant style centered me very firmly in the book. The characters feel like people I've known or could know and the story itself just seems interesting. I'm sure the movie version isn't going to do it justice (when do they ever? Seriously. Name a few), but it's worth seeing anyway I'm sure.

When I write my inevitable review, it will of course be on Suite101 as opposed to Examiner, which I'm now stocking with articles written more to attract a lot of fast hits than anything else...people aren't appreciating my lengthy literary reviews on there. So I'll put them somewhere that they might be useful -hopefully. We'll see. It's hard to know if people read about literature on the internet. I do, but that could just be because I write about it online. And because I'm a nerd.

Regardless -once I start posting to Suite, I'll start giving you links. In the meantime, my Examiner is still going to be updated 3 or 4 times a week (maybe), but it won't be the stuff you're used to seeing.

August 10. The new August 14. Kind of.

The most frustrating thing about buying books online is, of course, the wait. The shipping. I got a friendly e-mail from Amazon a couple of days ago when I ordered my books saying the delivery date is expected to be August 10 (4 days before my birthday). I got that e-mail August 4 and figured, "Oh, hey, that's only 6 days -not bad at all, considering the shipping was free and I'm getting 4 books." Here I am two days later, having bitten off all of my fingernails and having begun spazzing every time I see a UPS truck pull onto the street. August 10, although only 3 days away, seems like it will never come. I want my books.

Yesterday I was in a pretty foul mood all day, so I avoided human contact as much as possible. Of course, without a car and sans my own room, it became kind of difficult. The internet/cell phone don't work in the basement and my little brother's room (where I sleep) just isn't built for solitary hanging out. There's nowhere to sit but the bunk bed or the floor...and I sleep in the bunk bed and I try to keep my electronics out of it and my butt goes numb after about 10 minutes of floor-sittage. There are no other viable (read: comfortable) areas in the house where I could sit undisturbed and be a bitch in peace. Alas for all involved. We lived, and I wasn't the only crab-ass in the house.

Today I decided to do something that would a) take my mind off the fact that my books won't be here for another three days and b) would put me in a better mood than the one I was in yesterday. Essentially I beat myself all to hell. 4 games of Wii tennis (all of which I won of course), 3 rounds against those infernal punching bags (there's really no way to win there -the punching bags explode and my arms hurt for two days), 15 minutes on the treadmill (accompanied by the band And Then There Were None -good stuff) and then 20 minutes of Wii fit exercises. These include lunges, the half moon yoga pose, hula hoops (yeah, really), ski jumping, jackknifing and those weird ab twists that supposedly tone your whole waist area.

By the end of all of this, my knees are shaking, I've downed two rather large glasses of water and my head hurts. But endorphins make you happy (remember the Legally Blonde line? Thought so. Not that I have a husband to kill, happy or unhappy as I may be, but the same principle applies). Hopefully this grueling workout will keep me slightly more cheerful than I was yesterday -and who knows? If I keep it up, maybe those ab twists will actually tone my waist. Not that I need that, but it never hurts to be in better shape.

However, all through these workouts, I was still half hoping the UPS guy would show up with my books, despite the fact that I'm wearing red Pirates of the Caribbean men's medium boxers that I got at Disney World and a pink and orange sports bra (my two least favorite colors in one garish garment that should never be exposed to the light of day. Boo-yah). He didn't, of course. It's only just after 11 right now, and UPS guys don't show up in my neighborhood until around 2 or 3, sometimes later. Cue heavy sighing here:_____.

The books that are coming are awesome! I'm really excited about them. They were all paid for by a birthday present from my dad, who is also awesome. His only requirement was the I get one specific book, called The Library at Night. It looks sweet.

The other three books I got were:

1. The Time Traveler's Wife (the movie comes out on my birthday-August 14- and I've been meaning to read the book for ages anyway. Plus Eric Bana is in it. Win-win-win situation.)
2. Secrets to Happiness: A Novel (chick lit that isn't really chick lit. I've read good things about it, and it's about time I found a companion to my favorite chick lit book, English as a Second Language).
   
3. Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: The Authorized Adaptation (you read that right. If you know what that means, give yourself 1 internet. If you don't, I'll tell you: it means I got Fahrenheit 451 in the form of a graphic novel. Two of my favorite things -graphic novels/comic books and Ray Bradbury's genius -in one package. I couldn't not buy that and remain a whole entire person).
   

So there you have it, folks. This is why I'm more excited about August 10 than my own birthday (well, kind of).

It's supposed to be a review day, but since I plan on applying for a (better paying) job at another site, I'm skipping it. I've put up 3 things this week anyway, so it's not like I haven't met my goal. It's all good. Anyway, I'm sure some of you need refreshers on what I've already written, so go check it out.