borders book club on the time traveler's wife by audrey niffenegger

july 13, 2007

i have an appointment at 1830 hours at kelana jaya, giant. darn!!! my client is late. he turns up at 1920 hours. i scuttle through the contents of my suggestions with him and rush out of the building to drive like a maniac to reach borders, the curve at 2005 hrs.

shafinas, brian and lydia are already there, chatting. after a while jade comes in, takes her place and the discussion starts.

i am glad to see lydia. i first meet her at the holland film festival, we promise to meet a few times after that but our different schedules keep us from enjoying each other's company. she is a sweet young and intelligent future author. :-). it is only because of her, i complete the book in one day. lydia is asked to start the forum. she begins by declaring it is the most beautiful book she has ever read. she was hooked to it.

brian eyes her and speculates. (this is only my observation). he has this intimidating look. he is definitely not geared up to agree with her. he later says that he tries hard to like the book, the way his sister and mother liked it. but i think, some books are perhaps not meant for some people. brian says he thinks the book is trying too hard, he senses the writer being at work. furthermore, like i said before, i do not know what he sees in `the road', he must have this real diversed way of perceiving contents. it would have been great though, to have his analysis on the life of pi. regrettably, he was absent then.

jade wishes to identify if the book is about claire or is it about henry. i blurt out almost immediately ...it is about love and sex. hmm!! no one seems overwhelmingly delighted that i say that. oops. ok lets leave it at that.

the author is smart. she gives us both perspectives. can we really say it is just about one person?

jade likes the fact that henry is a crook, and that he actually enjoys being that especially when he teaches his younger self to do the unthinkable, pick pockets.

shafinas is quiet and composed. she only responds when we throw a question at her. until then, she listens to all our psychoanalysis. wiser is she who listens more and talks less. her view is that the author has portrayed claire to be perfect, an absolute angel, loyal, good, smart and faithful to henry. she is not in favour of niffenegger bringing in the infidelity of claire's moment with gomez. it is such a letdown to the perfect outline and build up of the angel.

makes her more human doesnt it? but then, is it a flaw or a strength? hmm.

why does niffenegger separate the book into two parts, the first and second. jade wonders if we have picked up any shifts.

everyone is quiet, a little unsure. maybe the marriage in the second part makes claire secure. we do not quite know.

jade puts it beautifully. in the first part, claire waits for henry to appear. in the second, she waits for him to disappear. hmm. we think about it. yeah, its true.

is this time travel an ability or a disease? a gift or a curse? would anyone be keen to live like that? not knowing when you will suddenly disappear into another realm of time, and then coming back to find out that you can't really change anything at all? we all have a consensus on that. definitely none of us are too thrilled to live like that. but i am sure it would do us no harm to have some tips on the `empat ekor'.

being henry is not easy. but he has adjusted, regulated, accepted and lived a complete life despite the condition. dr roy says it is frightening to abruptly find your self elsewhere and to survive through it.

is this book about time or timelessness?

shafinas says it is about hope and faith. it is about claire's bravery, the wait and the confidence that henry will appear sometime.

dr roy stresses on oneness, the soul mate that you find and the one you know will accept you for who you are.

brian says sometimes you can just meet someone but have this immediate connection to him, while others, you can spend a whole lifetime with and never have any chemistry at all. he likes the part when henry meets claire for the first time in the library and how henry has this natural affinity to move towards claire and gets attracted to her presence. bizzarely, there is a reason for everything even when we do not know what they are at that time.

jade speaks of niffenegger and infers that if she had perhaps contained the whole book into a shorter period of time or if she had made it more enclosed, it would have gotten more depth. she gives the example of two movies, the red lantern and kidnap. in the red lantern, the scene is the old courtyard and everything happens within it. it is more intense, full and deep, not at all contrived.

does this book seem terribly unnatural and manufactured then? does it seem unreal and like brian says, a book of `trying too hard'?

claire doesn't have anything constant with henry disappearing like that. but then the disappearing itself is constant, says jade.

lydia says that she is upset because claire's life seems to be about waiting for henry. she does not have an achievement of her own.
jade says that it is an achievement just to wait for henry for that long.
dr roy says, it comes back to kindred spirits.

shafinas thinks the book shows claire to be high spirited, strong and enthusiastic. a person like that should have achieved much more in her life. but they don't mention anything like that...it is only henry that she focuses on.

brian says niffenegger hasn't really explored the pain and the euphoria of this random life. the trouble of holding on to your senses is not something one can easily do. the constant wonder of this timelessness is not communicated.

dr roy says even during the war years, there are agonising moments just waiting for the people to return not knowing if they will ever come back. isn't that a heartrending feeling?

brian's query is directed at us. does the book move us?

lydia of course says yes, she finds it like a love letter beautifully written.
dr roy loves the beginning of the book and the sentence structures, the way it is written, and yes love always does move us in one way or the other as well as crafting eternal optimists out of us.
shafinas is puzzled, jade says she does not really get lost in it.

for me, i state that it does not really move me. i think a book moves me and has captured me completely when i am a character in it, with this one, i only imagined a situation where i am henry and i have this ability/curse to deal with. how would i survive it? but other than that, i can't say i was immersed in it like i was with the life of pi or even the road.

lets hope we don't fall out with the sailor who fell from grace with the sea. that's our book for next month by yukio mishima san. looking forward to it. sarah and kim, we missed your reflections and views. good luck with the exams. we expect to see you next month. happy reading. :-)

the time traveler's wife by audrey niffenegger

june has been a busy month. on the 29th, in the evening, i get a gift from my sister, and it is of course the time traveler's wife by audrey niffenegger, our next book club read.

july 1st, the next day i finish the book. an easy, light and smooth read probably because it is modern fiction. a love story, albeit with an unconventional format.
or is it science fiction? have not been reading much into the lovey stuff actually. prefer the literary type. this one has too much love and too much sex in it. but good for a change.

lydia, a friend, says she adores this book and has read it a few times. so my curiosity is raised and that is how i finish it in a day.

highly original. a soaring love story. a life long passion. detailed scenes. and dates. dates and dates.

in the beginning. i flip back the pages to check the dates since henry de tamble is travelling so often. after a while i realise that most of the time zones are chronologically following clare abshire's life.

henry is the time traveler. and claire is the time traveler's wife.

henry jumps around unpredictably in the timestream, appearing in the future or the past at random. claire is someone who is normal, who adjusts her life to the missing henry every now and then. the marriage is a challenge especially when there is difficulty in conceiving a child due to henry's chrono displacement disorder. essentially henry travels through time like some people have seizures or multiple personalities. when he is stressed or is unable to cope with a situation, boom...he disappears leaving his clothes behind and appears elsewhere in a different time zone, naked.

he revisits claire many times in her life, the youngest is when she was 6. we see how this impairment affects him, and what kind of adjustments he has to make to cope with these time travels. despite the unbelievable nature of time travel, niffenegger manages to keep us with her and not to question it but to go along with what she has to present.

i think love is a powerful emotion, more than that of even fear which can cripple you. perhaps for claire, the risk is worth the reward of seeing henry for whatever time she is able to. the risk is always worth the reward when there is love. it makes us the eternal optimists of our lives. with love everything seems possible and achievable.

needless to say, i loved the references to music in this book. an extremely convenient way for niffenegger to clearly define the era that the narrative is taking place in. i read later in some interview that she actually visits bands and listens to their songs, goes for their concerts during her free time. i think music is like good art, they speak to people in different ways.

the past, present and future intersect resulting in hinted information revealed earlier even though the actual experience cannot be altered. the time traveling is interesting, niffenegger does a wonderful job of it and she places the sequences in an eventual `easy to understand' form and therefore it unfolds well and our minds can piece together the story as easily as if there were no jumping dates. a lot of thought has been put into getting the time travelling right. great work.

i hear they are making a movie with eric bana as henry and rachel mcadams as claire, due to be released middle of next year. would be interesting to watch it.

as always, i immerse myself in any book that i read. after i finally put down this one, i thought to myself what if, what if it happened to me? would i have liked it? is it a disadvantage? if it were an illness and i had it, would i be happy with it, having the chance to know all that i don't and the chance of bringing back future thoughts, would i want it?

tough question. good book. smart author. hope she writes something else with less love and sex. :-)