The Time Traveller's Wife (SPOILERS)

But I liked it on the whole.

Just finished reading this and would love to hear others' opinions. I did really enjoy reading it, I found it a real page-turner and in most ways, very well-written - poetic without being flowery. The first half/third (about up until where they got married, i.e. mostly Henry visiting Clare before they met and the start of their relationship 'proper') in particular I found exciting and set up high expectations for the rest of the book. In comparison the second half was lacking. This actually was quite effective - mirroring the 'additions' of Henry in the first half of Clare's life with her missing him increasingly in the second as he disappears off to visit her when younger.
I liked the science-fiction esque side of it although had I not been 'warned' this was effectively a love story (I usually love sciencey-based stuff more than relationship stuff per se) I would have been extremely frustrated. The doctor who is studying his genetic condition is brought into the story almost half-heartedly and you never learn anything about Henry's condition, other than it being hereditary and uncontrollable, leaving it as just some magical mystical freak of nature. Names of chemicals are thrown in but this seems almost smug without any reference to what they actually mean. I know this wouldn't really add to the story but even some attempt to address this would have been interesting. Likewise the main paradox of whether people can change the future that Henry's seen - I was naturally curious and willing Henry/Clare to test what would happen if they tried to change the future, but each copped out of doing so. The author does (half) address the existence of this paradox with the dating of Clare's picture and keeps a consistent line throughout. However this is 'inevitably' the only way it could have been written to make any sense so I'll let her off.

The lack of reference to any kind of real world outside of Henry&Clare-dom becomes more conspicuous throughout (also, in the first half there's more real world stuff as Clare describes her teenage parties etc). Winning the lottery? That seems to just happen, and then they can conveniently afford what they like. Absolutely no mention of how winning the lottery may affect you in other ways (media coverage? Using the money for a greater good?) No police interest in Henry? No-one else caring that he just disappears in front of their eyes? Nothing about the effects of the doctor publishing his experiments which would surely be life-changing for all concerned and the world in general?

I did have a problem with a lot of the characters and the way they were developed or otherwise. (Did anyone else picture Clare as Clare from "Six Feet Under"?) There were some fairly lazy caricatures - mainly Clare's family's staff and Henry's landlady Kimy. We know almost nothing about Clare's brother and sister despite Henry acknowledging at the start that she seems to have a lot of affection for her sister. Gomez is set up to be a promisingly mysterious character, almost dark or sinister, not showing his true self. I was disappointed that his dark secret was that he was in love with Clare, and that's it. (Oh and he didn't care that he'd cheated on Charisse). This dark side just seemed to fizzle out - having kids, living with his love for Clare and presumably managing this well enough not to bother anyone except for Charisse asking Henry about it. I guess this just feels odd because in many other novels a dark unknown character would usually DO something at the end, whereas what actually happens with Gomez is probably more realistic.

I was slightly bewildered by the increasingly heavy hipster references throughout - where they eat (Thai food or whatever was hip and bohemian then), the bloody poetry throughout, just the whole feel that their lives became more and more characterised by this hipster stuff. Not sure what to make of it other than it certainly made Clare and Henry a lot less likable and human. The poetry stuff seemed pseduo-highbrow - just dropping in references without them having any meaning other than being just references. Alba's 'views' on that artist at the end are a perfect example - she just seemed keen to show off what she knew to her teacher rather than it affecting anything else she talked about or it having any meaning other than 'look how clever I am, and if you don't get it you are missing out on the meaning'. The fact that Henry is so proud of this in Alba above everything else seems rather distasteful - he can only truly love his child if she's a precocious art-lover. Even Henry being a punk-loving librarian just seemed to be there to tick 'cool' boxes (I do know several such people, and they are generally considered to be uber cool - liking punk = rock n roll, librarian = intellectual and sensitive).

The biggest downfall, to me, in a book solely about C&H's relationship was that it failed to examine the main driving force behind their relationship - cause & effect. There's no attempt to disentangle the core of their love which is basically 'they love each other because they know they love each other in the future'. Other than a couple of throwaway lines saying 'cause & effect are complicated' this is ignored in the context of their relationship (examined in marginally more detail in the story about Clare's picture). They just get together and are then consistently in love. No 'what-ifs' - we all want to know whether they would be so much in love without this bond (for Clare, a mysterious man from her childhood becomes real; for him, she already knows about his traveling and is sure she loves him). The actual point of them falling in love is absent.

Finally, I have trouble believing that Henry would be so mean as to keep Clare waiting into her 80s for her next glimpse of him. Having been so successfully careful throughout with what he doesn't tell her and mainly being wise as to what is 'for her own good' - if he really wanted her to be free he wouldn't have told her this? Or, does this reveal him to be, underneath, *that* possessive and selfish? I don't find that too inconsistent with his character. Another interpretation might be that as there are many coats in the house when he visits her in her 80s, that she has loved again and raised a family?