Jayson’s Reviews > The Time Traveler's Wife > Status Update
Jayson
is 86% done
Notes:
(1) "She is sitting on the rock, coolly immaculate in a white silk dress, white stockings and shoes, and short white gloves."
- Clare dresses head-to-toe in white to see Henry on her eighteenth birthday. How very virgin-symbolic. Vestal, even.
- Henry jokes that it's not their wedding day. Though, I think part of her believes as much. I mean, she makes him wear a tuxedo and everything.
(Continued in comments)
— Jan 04, 2025 08:30AM
(1) "She is sitting on the rock, coolly immaculate in a white silk dress, white stockings and shoes, and short white gloves."
- Clare dresses head-to-toe in white to see Henry on her eighteenth birthday. How very virgin-symbolic. Vestal, even.
- Henry jokes that it's not their wedding day. Though, I think part of her believes as much. I mean, she makes him wear a tuxedo and everything.
(Continued in comments)
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Jayson’s Previous Updates
Jayson
is 95% done
Notes:
(1) At this point I've finished the novel. There's a sample chapter from a yet-to-be-released sequel but I won't count that toward my final assessment.
- I'll read it later though. Usually I won't bother and just wait for the book to come out, but it's been more than a decade now and experience has taught me to have an "I'll believe it when I see it" approach with long-awaited sequels.
(Continued in comments)
— Jan 05, 2025 03:10AM
(1) At this point I've finished the novel. There's a sample chapter from a yet-to-be-released sequel but I won't count that toward my final assessment.
- I'll read it later though. Usually I won't bother and just wait for the book to come out, but it's been more than a decade now and experience has taught me to have an "I'll believe it when I see it" approach with long-awaited sequels.
(Continued in comments)
Jayson
is 74% done
Notes:
(1) "I kiss her, very roughly. She is resistant. I release her, and she turns her back on me.
'That wasn't very nice,' she says in a small voice.
What is wrong with me? Clare, at fifteen, is not the same person...'"
- Yeah, what's wrong with you? that's sexually assaulting a minor!
- As emotional and touching as this book can be, toxic scenes like this throw cold water over everything.
(Continued in comments)
— Jan 03, 2025 09:30AM
(1) "I kiss her, very roughly. She is resistant. I release her, and she turns her back on me.
'That wasn't very nice,' she says in a small voice.
What is wrong with me? Clare, at fifteen, is not the same person...'"
- Yeah, what's wrong with you? that's sexually assaulting a minor!
- As emotional and touching as this book can be, toxic scenes like this throw cold water over everything.
(Continued in comments)
Jayson
is 62% done
Notes:
(1) "I got stuck in 1973 and I couldn't get out and I was in Muncie, Indiana, for days living in a barn and I got decked by the guy who owned the barn because he thought I was trying to mess with his sheep."
- Presumably, "mess with" means having sex with the sheep. Can't fault the barn owner. I mean, Henry time travels buck naked, I think most people would come to the same conclusion.
(Continued in comments)
— Dec 31, 2024 01:00AM
(1) "I got stuck in 1973 and I couldn't get out and I was in Muncie, Indiana, for days living in a barn and I got decked by the guy who owned the barn because he thought I was trying to mess with his sheep."
- Presumably, "mess with" means having sex with the sheep. Can't fault the barn owner. I mean, Henry time travels buck naked, I think most people would come to the same conclusion.
(Continued in comments)
Jayson
is 50% done
Notes:
(1) Henry introduces Clare to his dad and Mrs. Kim. It seems clear to me that dinner with Henry's people albeit more awkward and directly confrontational, feels more normal.
- No long, drawn-out, jokey pretense about cannibalism or heroin, like with Clare's people. Everything's out in the open. They can even joke about sex.
- All told, it's a much more successful and desirable outcome.
(Continued in comments)
— Dec 27, 2024 06:30AM
(1) Henry introduces Clare to his dad and Mrs. Kim. It seems clear to me that dinner with Henry's people albeit more awkward and directly confrontational, feels more normal.
- No long, drawn-out, jokey pretense about cannibalism or heroin, like with Clare's people. Everything's out in the open. They can even joke about sex.
- All told, it's a much more successful and desirable outcome.
(Continued in comments)
Jayson
is 41% done
Notes:
(1) Clare: "You're corrupting a minor."
Henry: "Oh, he would get there anyway, without me. Wouldn’t you?"
Bobby: "I've been trying, but it ain't easy, here."
- I know they're joking about exposing a kid to punk music, but Clare may as well be referring to herself.
(2) "'You do have a record player, right?' 'My parents have one,' Bobby says. Henry winces."
- I react the same to CD talk.
(Continued in comments)
— Dec 26, 2024 02:55AM
(1) Clare: "You're corrupting a minor."
Henry: "Oh, he would get there anyway, without me. Wouldn’t you?"
Bobby: "I've been trying, but it ain't easy, here."
- I know they're joking about exposing a kid to punk music, but Clare may as well be referring to herself.
(2) "'You do have a record player, right?' 'My parents have one,' Bobby says. Henry winces."
- I react the same to CD talk.
(Continued in comments)
Jayson
is 30% done
Notes:
(1) "It occurs to me that Clare might prefer to be with this later edition of me, since after all they do know each other better."
- While, she clearly has no problem with older men, the smaller the age difference the better. I mean, the bare minimum's already eight years.
- Turns out, Henry's right. Side-by-side, Clare does prefer older Henry. Young Henry's like domesticating a stray.
(Continued in comments)
— Dec 23, 2024 08:05AM
(1) "It occurs to me that Clare might prefer to be with this later edition of me, since after all they do know each other better."
- While, she clearly has no problem with older men, the smaller the age difference the better. I mean, the bare minimum's already eight years.
- Turns out, Henry's right. Side-by-side, Clare does prefer older Henry. Young Henry's like domesticating a stray.
(Continued in comments)
Jayson
is 20% done
Notes:
(1) Apparently, Ouija boards actually work in this universe! To her own surprise, Clare's childhood friends divine that Henry's her "husband."
- This suggests some omniscient being or spirit is guiding the rollers, an agent of fate unconcerned with disclosing the future.
- It also suggests time travel here isn't strictly science fiction, but more than likely supernatural/magic as well.
(Continued in comments)
— Dec 21, 2024 10:30PM
(1) Apparently, Ouija boards actually work in this universe! To her own surprise, Clare's childhood friends divine that Henry's her "husband."
- This suggests some omniscient being or spirit is guiding the rollers, an agent of fate unconcerned with disclosing the future.
- It also suggests time travel here isn't strictly science fiction, but more than likely supernatural/magic as well.
(Continued in comments)
Jayson
is 10% done
Notes:
(1) There's an awful lot of nudity talk in the prologue, as if to constantly underscore, and drill into your head, at the outset what time travel here entails.
- In this case, it's waking up naked and vulnerable.
- On the plus side, probably not "Naked and Afraid" (like that TV show), since I suppose you'd get used to the feeling pretty quick. I mean, there'd be no fear of the unknown.
(Continued in comments)
— Dec 16, 2024 08:30AM
(1) There's an awful lot of nudity talk in the prologue, as if to constantly underscore, and drill into your head, at the outset what time travel here entails.
- In this case, it's waking up naked and vulnerable.
- On the plus side, probably not "Naked and Afraid" (like that TV show), since I suppose you'd get used to the feeling pretty quick. I mean, there'd be no fear of the unknown.
(Continued in comments)
Jayson
is starting
Notes:
(1) Contrary to popular belief, I will on occasion read books other people might be interested in and/or have actually heard of.
(2) I'm reading this now because one of my goals for 2024 is to read at least one 500+ page book.
- Lucky enough, after being on hold forever, this eBook just became available at my library.
- I don't expect to have a problem finishing before the return date, but the clock's ticking!
— Dec 07, 2024 04:00AM
(1) Contrary to popular belief, I will on occasion read books other people might be interested in and/or have actually heard of.
(2) I'm reading this now because one of my goals for 2024 is to read at least one 500+ page book.
- Lucky enough, after being on hold forever, this eBook just became available at my library.
- I don't expect to have a problem finishing before the return date, but the clock's ticking!
(2) Henry: "Happy Birthday."
Clare: "I'm eighteen."
Henry: "Heavens, so you are. It seems like only yesterday that you were six."
- Yeah, that's the sort of talk you'd normally hear from a distant relative or family friend. It's not making this situation seem less inappropriate.
(3) "Despite some pretty amazing provocation on Clare's part I have refused to make love to her and have spent many amusing hours chatting with her about this and that while trying to ignore painful hard-ons. But today, Clare is legally, if perhaps not emotionally, an adult."
- The sex is apparently a birthday gift, which is at least something he knows she wants. Picking out gifts when you've got no clue is the worst!
- I'm thinking that it's Niffenegger's intention to make this scene as awkward as possible. If not for maximum discomfort, then why max out the sexual age gap (or nearly so) at its earliest permissible point?
(4) "I'm feeling responsible and Humbert Humbertish and also as though I am being watched by many people, and all of those people are Clare."
- Responsible for essentially grooming her from age six? Most certainly!
- This is another Lolita reference, which at least shows he's self-aware about what he's doing and how messed up it inherently is. Of course, he does it anyway.
(5) Thankfully, for me and my delicate sensibilities, the writing during the sex is about everything but the actual sex.
- We get the very beginning and the very end, and that's it. It's as if it's been blurred out of focus and all we can see is the greenery in the background.
- One of the main reasons why I don't read romance novels is because of how explicit they can get. I don't exactly expect them to be Hallmark, but spare me the gory details. As it is, this is only moderately explicit.
(6) Henry: "I swear to you that the next time we meet you're going to practically rape me. I mean, you are really exceptionally talented at this."
- You know, casually throwing around the word "rape" isn't exactly making this whole encounter seem less problematic.
- Seems like Henry is shifting some blame here, making what he's doing seem somehow less wrong by suggesting Clare is capable of worse in the future.
(7) Clare: "I slept with someone."
Henry: "Who?"
Clare: "Gomez."
Henry: "Why?"
Clare: "I was drunk. We were at a party, and Charisse was in Boston—"
Henry: "Wait a minute. When was this?"
Clare: "1990."
Henry: [Laughs] "Oh, God. Clare, don't do that to me, shit. 1990. Jesus, I thought you were telling me something that happened, like, last week."
- More evidence to my speculation that Clare genuinely considered her eighteenth birthday sex with Henry as a kind of marriage consummation. She seems like the kind of person who takes promise rings seriously.
- Whereas Clare treats this as an actual admission of infidelity, Henry seems wholly unbothered, at least outwardly. Possibly to relieve any guilt that he gave her a life-long complex about it.
- Alternatively, Henry could be enjoying the idea that he's ruined her for other men. I wouldn't put it past him.
(8) "'[Sex with Gomez] was sort of like being a china shop, and trying to get off with a bull.'
'He's bigger than me.' Henry states this as fact.
'I wouldn't know about now, but back then he had no finesse at all.'"
- While it's frequently brought up how Gomez is quite tall and has a large frame, I doubt Henry's strictly referring to body mass.
- Huh, seems like Henry did spoil her for other men. But then, as the world's foremost Clare expert, Henry has the unfair advantage of knowing exactly what she likes after years of trial and error.
(9) Clare: "Gomez is beautiful, tall and broad and... large, an entirely different sort of beauty from Henry's lithe panther wildness. I immediately feel horrible for comparing."
- Yeah, if being redundant didn't do it, the ellipses totally gave away exactly what Clare means by "large." I mean, come on, what's the point of subtleties in the first place if you're just going to spell it out like that, especially as these lines are only in her head.
(10) "I turn my head and beside me, sleeping, in his bed, is Gomez. Suddenly I remember, and I panic. Henry. Henry will kill me. Charisse will hate me."
- Suddenly being extra affectionate with Henry after their first meeting starts to make a lot of sense. What Henry joked was "rape" could just have been Clare overcompensating for years of pent-up guilt at her supposed infidelity. It's a "please don't leave me" sort of manic desperation.
- I agree, Charisse would hate her (more).
(11) Henry: "Well, how did you like [the opera]?"
Charisse: "It was silly, wasn't it? But the singing made it not silly."
- That may be the best explanation for opera that I've ever heard!
(12) At this point in the novel, we have a whole lot of uncertainty injected into this world where Henry and Clare seemingly knew all the answers.
- Uncertainty about marital fidelity, mortality and the future in general.
- The only thing made certain here is that Alba inherits the ability to time travel. She flies in from the future like Pandora's box personified.
(13) "I know there's been some talk at work about my health, about why I have suddenly lost so much weight and the fact that I have recently aged rapidly. Everyone was extra nice, the way people are to AIDS victims and chemotherapy patients ... I looked up at them, heartstruck, and I realized that my co-workers think I am dying."
- Well, not dying exactly. There's no terminal illness. More like he's got an unavoidable date with death.
(14) We get explanations for what happened when Clare ran out of the house in 1984 and what happened in the parking garage in 2006.
- Finally some honest-to-goodness time travel mystery reveals! We get payoffs for seeds planted. Up until now, it's been a lot of visiting the past and teasing out more or less unsurprising information about the future.
(15) As much as I appreciate the author's expertise in paper making and fiber sculpture, it's like a foreign language.
- All this intricate detail is wasted on me. Everything just goes in one ear and out the other.