Time Traveller's Wife Review

As mentioned in my last blog, I just finished reading Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffengger. After reading it I rented the film and watched it. I wanted to share a little review of the book/movie and give my opinions.

Time Traveller's Wife is a timeless love story about a time traveller named Henry DeTamble. His genetic mutation causes him to disappear from the present at any given moment and appear either in the past or the future. When he travels, he leaves behind all possessions and arrives at another place in another time. Time travelling has a couple of upsides, such as seeing people who have passed away again or knowing winning lottery numbers before announced, but for the most part it's a curse. Henry resorts to stealing clothes and money when he travels. Sometimes, he visits himself at a different points in his life. And many times when he travels, he visits the same place, a meadow near the home of Clare Abshire.

Clare is six when she first meets Henry, who was in his mid thirties at the time. In the present day, Henry is just eight years older than Clare. Clare meets him in the meadow each time he visits, with a stack of clothes for him, and eventually falls in love with him. They do not meet in the present day until Clare is nearly twenty. Henry, in the present day, has not traveled to the meadow yet and does not know Clare.

The story continues to share the rest of their life together and their struggles. It is written in first person from both Henry and Clare, which gives us the opportunity to know each of them personally and how they each deal with certain scenarios. Time travel plots add an interesting twist to a typical love story. Clare and Henry have similar problems that most couples do but it is amplified and trumped by the fact that Henry is not always around or reliable.

Once immersed in this book, it was hard to put down. Each character is so passionate that their passion either leads to triumph or failure, which leads me to the one thing I disliked about the story. There was no middle ground. Nearly every character was drown in misery because of their passion. I will not go into full detail because I don't want to spoil anything but it's easy to become attached to the characters and it does not always end up in a good way for them.

I loved this story; the characters, the detail, the plot, the outcome. However, the story did not translate well to the film. The actor choice was the only thing that agreed well with me. There were too many things left out of the film, too much jumping around, and had I not read the story, I would be very confused. Actually, Kyle watched it but has not read the story and his opinion consisted of single word descriptions, "Weird. Confusing. Kind of scary."

So, in a nutshell, book: great, movie: bad.