Jayson’s Reviews > The Time Traveler's Wife > Status Update
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)
3 likes · Like flag
Jayson’s Previous Updates
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)
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!
- The common theme: parts of the physical self dying and being lost forever.
- I expect the intention of this juxtaposition is to equate the losses, however dissimilar, as a shared condition and side-effect of the time travel gene. Time travel doesn't just affect Henry, which is a theme that pops up later on with Ingrid.
(3) Henry teaches Clare how to cook since he can't anymore.
- You'd think she'd have some experience and acumen, given her art involves recipes and a "cooking" process.
- Though, I guess Clare's never needed to cook. Whether it's Nell or Charisse or Henry, she's always lived with someone who did it better, and so she was content to accede to their expertise.
- The only time we've really seen Clare cook was at the dinner where Henry first met Gomez and Charisse. He had to rescue her from that disaster and I guess she's relied on him ever since.
(4) We find out that Ingrid knew Henry's secret. Which makes sense since they were together long enough.
- I'd expect he'd frequently disappear and reappear on her.
- Ingrid, we see, is far less fatalistic than Clare. Or at least less resigned to predestination and less accepting of Henry being fated to end up with Clare instead of her.
(5) We also find out that Ingrid's suicide wasn't planned, hence why she never left a note.
- She kills herself because Henry shows up and has no good news to tell her about her future, her being dead and all.
- I guess he could have lied, I would have. It wouldn't change the future, but it couldn't hurt.
(6) I've realized all these scenes from 2006 are meant to be the future, whereas to me it's the bygone past. This book was published in 2003.
- Makes me wonder if reading it as the future and not the past engenders different sentiment?
(7) Gomez: "You need something new. Someone new. You can't sit around for the rest of your life waiting for Henry to show up."
Clare: "Sure I can. Watch me."
- Well, that promise didn't last very long. Though, technically speaking, it wasn't someone new.
- The book ends with an excerpt from The Odyssey, which along with Lolita are the main literary allusions we're meant to pick common themes from. With this dialogue between Gomez and Clare, we learn that the analogue with Penelope and Odysseus refers to the time after Henry's death, not when he's alive. Which makes much more sense.
(8) Calling back to my first update here, it's clear by now that I did not in fact manage to finish this book before 2024 ended.
- In fact, I had to return this library e-book and pick up a physical copy, only to be immediately skipped ahead along the wait list and re-issued the e-book. I guess nobody else felt like reading this during the holidays.
- No worries though. I can tick-off my reading goal of at least one 500+ page book for 2025. As for fulfilling last year's goal... I found a loophole, so I'm all covered for 2024 as well :)
(9) As for my overall thoughts? This book certainly wasn't what I expected it was going to be. I'd never seen the movie or any adaptation, so I went into reading it on reputation alone.
- I thought it was going to be a page-turner. It wasn't. In fact, it dragged in several sections and could have been cut down by at least a quarter in length.
- It ended up being more sexually explicit than I'm used to reading. Though, that's more of a me-problem. As a romance novel, I should have understood that from the start.
- As you can tell from reading these updates, there are aspects of this that I have serious problems with. Though, problematic themes and plot points aren't necessarily indicative of the book's overall quality. This novel makes several references to Lolita and, judging it by that standard, I must accept the idea that good literature often tackles difficult and uncomfortable subject matter.
- Having said all that, I had a good time with it. Every character felt real and fully fleshed-out. Even the minor ones like Henry's co-workers never felt like afterthoughts. The best aspect of the story is how it pulls on the heartstrings and almost compels emotional responses. Ultimately, this is about relationships: how they're established, strained, frayed, restored, tolerated, remembered, awaited, and lost. It's a romance, sure, but it's about more than just the love between its two principals.