Jayson’s Reviews > The Time Traveler's Wife > Status Update

- Henry's probably in Muncie because his grandparents live there. Though, I don't know why he doesn't just go hunker down at their place, young Henry's probably there too. But then, he can't really take to the streets if he can't find clothes. Ending up at a barn must mean he materialized somewhere rural, without many mugging or thieving options.
(2) Clare, like Henry, compares herself to a caterpillar in a cocoon.
- This time it's about the creative process of fine art.
- It's a juxtaposition between Henry's physical transformation (getting a haircut) and her own creativity. What they have in common is the idea of the imagination made tangible. Like her art, the short-haired Henry that existed in her head/memory suddenly appears before her in the flesh.
(3) Clare: "I feel like Penelope, weaving and unweaving. And what of Henry, my Odysseus? Henry is an artist of another sort, a disappearing artist."
- Yup, he's a regular Henry Houdini.
- Comparing her and Henry to Penelope and Odysseus is actually rather apt. While the gods take Henry off on far-flung adventures, leaving Clare to wait dutifully for his return, those moments of abandonment are both frequent and relatively brief. It's not the immediate circumstance that makes the metaphor. Rather, it's much younger Clare who waits for Henry all her teenage years, rejecting all suitors until his surprise return.
(4) Henry: "How can Clare listen to Cheap Trick? Why does she like The Eagles? I'll never know, because she gets all defensive when I ask her. How can it be that the woman I love doesn't want to listen to Musique du Garrot et de la Farraille?"
- Turns out, Henry's a real musical snob! But then, Clare finds his musical tastes niche and esoteric.
- They're eight years apart, he's a boomer and she's Gen-X, and so it makes sense that they'd like different music. Though here it's not a matter of era or genre, but of sophistication versus mass appeal.
- They both like The Beatles, though. Which hits that sweet spot of being both popular and highbrow enough to satisfy each of their musical wants and needs.
(5) Even though Gomez is on the "good guy" side of the ledger, he is still seen as a potential threat.
- At the bookstore, Henry catches him leering at Clare.
(6) "I see Charisse standing behind him on tiptoe, trying to see over his shoulder. 'Wow,' she says, pushing past Gomez. Henry throws a dish cloth over his prone duplicate's genitalia. 'Oh, Henry, don't worry about it, I've drawn a gazillion models—' 'I try to retain a modicum of privacy,' Henry snaps."
- Henry materializes naked and out of nowhere. Niffenegger leaves it to the reader's imagination what exactly Charisse is wowed by.
- Charisse gives the old "Don't worry, I see people naked all the time" excuse. Which is much easier to accept if the person's a doctor and not some bohemian family friend. Accidental nudity's always worse when it's someone you know.
(7) In successive sections, we have Gomez possibly oogling Clare and Charisse possibly oogling Henry.
- Threats to Henry and Clare's marriage lay in very close proximity.
(8) "'What are you doing?'
'Sorry?'
'You've been running around naked in the stacks again, haven't you?'
'Um, maybe.' I try to sound nonchalant.
'Jesus, Henry. Give me the cart.' ... I buy Matt lunch at the Beau Thai, and all is forgiven, if not forgotten."
- Apparently, Henry running around naked in the library is well-known to his co-workers. They seem to tolerate it, perhaps as a possible sexual kink. Possibly, they don't want to kink shame.
- I also appreciate that Beau Thai is a pun for bowtie. Though Thailand was never colonized by the French, or anyone for that matter. It's Vietnamese restaurants that will often have French names.
(9) Roberto: "I [am] convinced that this is all due to an unspeakably bizarre sexual kink involving nudity and books."
- Well, that answers that question. Kink it is!
- Roberto, Henry's boss, while appalled, decides not to fire Henry. I guess with this out in the open with all his co-workers, including security, it's just his thing now. Apparently, everyone's okay with that.
- I'm shocked it took the library until 1995 for anyone to bring it up. Presumably, he's been working there for around a decade.
(10) Henry gets Dr. Kendrick to believe him because he shows him proof.
- It's actually not proof from future knowledge that makes Kendrick a believer—he dismisses that as a kind of magic trick or clairvoyance at the most—but seeing Henry disappear in-person, with his own eyes.
- Henry's evidence only convinces Kendrick indirectly. Ironically, it's not the meticulous coordination, research and planning that did it, but pure luck that everyone was in the right place at the right time. The evidence only mattered inasmuch as it put him in the vicinity.
(11) There's a lot of death that happens from when Henry and Clare decide to have a baby to when they do.
- Death not only from multiple failed pregnancies, but Clare's own mother from cancer.
- I expect this continual rollout of misery is meant to imbue the inevitable birth of their child with much more meaning.
(12) Gomez initially wanted to name his daughter Wednesday.
- With the recent Netflix show, Gen-Z readers may actually get that reference.