The Time Travellers Wife

I’d heard such strong opinions about the Time Travellers Wife before I read it. It seemed to divide people into two camps, the lovers and the haters. Normally when this happens to book or a film or whatever, I’ll read or watch or whatever it and decide that everyone is wrong and the subject matter is pretty average. However, there are exceptions to this rule, and the Time Travellers Wife is one of them. In other words, it’s shit.

But how did it go wrong? I think most people will agree it has a wonderfully trashy sci-fi premise (although again I know people who would object to that…). There’s a girl who falls in love with a guy, but the guy cant stop travelling through time and hi-jinks ensue. With a concept like that, I think most author’s would struggle to fail. Somehow, having done the hard work, Audrey Niffenegger fails spectacularly, and she does so for 2 reasons.

The first is that she misses out all the dark and interesting stuff in the novel. Early on it’s revealed that Mr Time Traveller is haunted by the death of his mother, who died in a car crash when he was four. As a result of his time travelling medical condition, he ends up watching this happen over and over, from a different viewpoint each time. This is a dark, brooding and really interesting idea, and is ripe for some emotional exploitation. However, having been told about all of these visits you know what happens? It never gets mentioned again. Any writer worth half their salt would have brought you back to this scene half a dozen times, and the more Hellerian amongst them would have even made him accidentally cause the accident. Missed opportunites such as this frequent the novel.

The second issue is that there is no purpose or point to the book. I learned after reading that the original idea for this book was for Niffenegger to write a metaphor for her perfect guy. As a result of this, the book is heavy on sentimentality and light on any actual moral or point. The only theme I could discern was the loneliness associated with being alone, but this is negated by one small thing: The guy fucking time travels. How am I expected to feel the loss of any character if the guys keeps jumping through time and visiting everyone?!? Regular book clubbers will remember from last week that One Day won me over with it’s charming characters and concept. Part of it tackled a very similar theme, but you know what? It didn’t have someone jumping out of time to console people!

I should probably bring this review to a close before my brain explodes. As far as I can tell people who want to read this book fall into two camps. People who want time travel and people who want a love story. My recommendation to the time team is to find some proper science fiction. For the love train, how about you read One Day?