The Time Traveler's Wife
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The Time Traveler's Wife (ISBN 015602943X) is a novel by Audrey Niffenegger. It is an unconventional love story that centers on a man with a strange genetic disorder that causes him to unpredictably time-travel and his wife, an artist, who has to cope with his constant absence. The book is rich in detail, with special detail going into the meals enjoyed by Henry and Clare, and the locations they visit. A good deal of material is also spent on their sex life.
Plot summary
The novel tells the story of Henry de Tamble and his wife, Clare Abshire. Henry has a very rare genetic disorder known as "Chrono-Impairment" that causes him to involuntarily travel through time. He is unable to control when he leaves, where he goes, or how long his trip will last. His destinations are tied to his subconscious, as Henry most often travels to places he has visited (or will eventually visit). Certain things like stress can trigger time travel for Henry. It is described as being like epilepsy or a panic attack.
Henry cannot take anything with him into the future or the past. Even fillings in his teeth are left behind. He always "arrives" naked and must work hard while "away" to find clothing, shelter, and food without getting beaten up or arrested.
Henry amasses a number of survival skills including pickpocketing, lock-picking, expert fighting skills and various other tricks to make it easier on himself to get by without the bare necessities. He actually learns many of these things from older versions of himself, on numerous trips into the future.
Clare Abshire is a perfectly normal woman in most respects. She comes from a wealthy family, goes to Catholic school and eventually moves to Chicago to attend college. She studies art, and eventually becomes an artist herself; working with several types of molding paper. Most women do not, however, meet their eventual husbands lurking naked in the woods behind their childhood homes.
Henry time travels into Clare's childhood many, many times, starting when she is six years old and continuing until her eighteenth birthday, when they are separated for two years until they finally meet in real time for both of them.
When 20-year-old Clare finds the 28-year-old Henry in the present, he has never seen her before, and she has known him all her life. Clare's past is still in Henry's future. She gives him a diary in which she has written down the dates that he visited her and explains that he told her that in the future, they are married.
Henry begins to experience the events in Clare's childhood. In the novel, the future cannot be changed, and many tragic events are foreshadowed in the past.
Clare and Henry, now married, have trouble conceiving a child because of his genetic disorder. After six miscarriages, Henry gives up and has a vasectomy. Later, a past version of Henry travels to the future and sleeps with Claire. This enables Claire to finally get pregnant. They eventually have a daughter named Alba, who is diagnosed with the same disorder. Before she is born, Henry travels to the future and meets Alba at ten years old. Circumstances force her to tell him that he dies when she is five.
Shortly thereafter, Henry time-travels to a winter location, where he is unable to find shelter. He experiences hypothermia and develops frostbite. After returning to his 'present', he later loses his feet, which the book has stressed as his greatest means of survival. It is not long before Henry teleports into the middle of the Michigan woods during deer season and is fatally shot by Clare's own brother. He returns to the present moments before his death.
Clare is devastated by Henry's passing, and feels unable to live her life without him. She finds a letter from Henry describing an experience he had with her in her future, when she is an old woman. Henry doesn't want Clare to wait for him, but he wants her to know that they will see each other again because love knows no boundaries and transcends time and death. Clare then lives into old age where she is visited by Henry.
Movie
The rights to the book were bought by Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's company Plan B in 2003. As of March 2005, Gus Van Sant was in negotiations to direct "The Time Traveler's Wife" for New Line Cinema. Pg. 29 New Line said Brad Grey, who became the manager of Paramount Studios on March 1, 2005 will be the producer. Jeremy Leven has written the screenplay. (Same article as TheBookStandard.com, different media outlet) The Chicago Sun-Times in February 2005 stated that "Brad Pitt...will definitely star in 'The Time Traveler's Wife'." But in August 2005, the Daily Star stated that Brad Pitt would no longer star in the movie.Notes
External links
- [Movie Entry, Internet Movie Database], The Time Traveler's Wife at IMDb.com
- [Amazon.com Reviews], Reviews of The Time Traveler's Wife at Amazon.com
- [Audrey Niffenegger, Her Site], Audrey Niffenegger's official website
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