H & E Bookish Chat: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Erica Robyn Reads and I recently buddy-read The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. After messaging one another to say we had each completed the book, this happened:

H: Hmm not sure how I feel about the ending or the last quarter of the book at all.

E: It got weird right?

H: Yeah!

E: The more I'm thinking about it, the more issues I'm having with it.

H: Yeah, same. It seemed messy at the end. Like you'd think such an intricate plot would have a good ending.

Even so, we are so excited to FINALLY have the second installment of H & E Bookish Chats!

But first, if you missed either of our reviews, feel free to click them out by clicking below:

Heather's Review

Erica's Review

Now, let's jump into the chat!

Quick Note: Erica and I had ten questions that we pulled from book group discussions to talk about our feelings with the book! So at the end of this post I will link her side of the chat! We both have five questions so please go check out her post too! Also: SPOILER WARNING for the book! I have both of our reviews linked above! My review (and I believe Erica's as well) is spoiler free.

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Although Henry does the time traveling, Clare is equally impacted. How does she cope with his journeys and does she ultimately accept them?

H: I think as a child she sees the acts of him time traveling as exciting, like being visited by a friend no one knows about who gives her their full attention. It's exciting for a little kid. But as an adult she sees his time traveling as a bittersweet thing. She loves the idea of him time traveling to her as a child because that is the way she builds so many cherished memories with him. But on the other side, now as an adult when he leaves she is stuck with the fear of not knowing where he goes, him not coming back, coming back hurt, or not knowing how long it will be till he can return. There is an underlying calm knowing that he goes to her at certain ages, which means he isn't going to die, but she still has a understandable amount of anxiety when he disappears. I think that in the end she does ultimately accept his journeys, but depending on her mood or life experiences in that moment she can be more frustrated at the situation.

E: Agreed! I think it was a great idea to have Clare meet the time traveler as an impressionable kid that still believe in magic and such things. If he has literally popped into her life as an adult, I think she probably would have pepper sprayed him or something. There was a line in the book where Clare realized all the time he was spending with her in childhood was time being taken away from them as adults, that his pretty hard. While she does accept the absences, Ii don't think she ever really gets used to them.

How does the writer introduce the reader to the concept of time travel as a real occurrence? Does she succeed? 

H: In a way it's realistic, at least to me, because of the way it was written. From the way it's described as a medical disease needing to be studied by doctors versus it being this magic thing to the way Henry tells people. The fact that it's not seen as this magical ability like he is Peter Pan and instead is seen as something he needs to live with and adapt his life to made it feel more like a medical condition.

E: It was realistic to me as well! I thought it was definitely an interesting take to be more of a medical thing rather than magical. I also thought it was clever that nothing went with him when he traveled. That made the end make a lot more sense once you got closer to the end of the book.

Henry's life is disrupted on multiple levels by spontaneous time travel. How does his career as a librarian offset his tumultuous disappearances? Why does that job appeal to Henry?

H: I honestly have no idea with this one! We barely see him as a librarian other than him meeting Clare and his boss being annoyed that he keeps popping into work naked. But that would have happened no matter what job he had. He's a literary guy (a bit pretentious), so I assumed that was made him want to be a librarian.

E: I don't know about this one either. I feel like this was pretty glossed over. In the real world, I feel like he would have been fired instantly when they first fund his naked in the stacks.

H: Yeah! I thought he was going to get fired when his boss confronted him, and at first when he wasn't  I thought it was sweet, but at the same time he didn't seem to be this exceptional employee. Any other job wouldn't have handled an employee showing up to work naked multiple times and disappearing randomly. Also, when his coworkers learn the truth I honestly found it surprising at their lack of emotions/shock. They were just "meh, whatever" and that was it.

E: Yeah, that was definitely odd... I feel like the author kept dropping hints that this was going to be seen as a normal thing soon, so maybe at that point, people were already on the path of believing. That scene was just so rushed and odd... That was definitely another massive loose end.

H: Yeah! I assumed the issue was with the fact that the scene was so rushed, it was so quick and we didn't get any sort of reaction from the workers. I think you're right, maybe society already knew about the condition, or were starting to, so the reactions were less extreme.

Henry and Clare know each other for years before they fall in love as adults. How does Clare cope with the knowledge that at a young age she shows that Henry is the man she will eventually marry? 

H: Honestly, I don't think Clare copes with it very well and it's a bit sad at times. Their individual interactions are often sweet (but also at the same time kind of gross because of the age gaps sometimes. I often had to force myself to see it as a big picture thing but even with that it made me a little uncomfortable) but when specifically talking about Clare, her life kind of revolves around Henry. Henry gets to experiment and date around for the first 28 years not knowing the existence of Clare, but Clare has known him since she was 6. So she is sitting and waiting for Henry all her teenage life and a couple years as an adult until she can be in a real relationship with him.It gets so bad that when Henry is gone for two years Clare becomes depressed and doesn't get out of it until her family pressures her to basically snap out of it. Despite Henry having the time traveling ability (which obviously messes up a lot of aspects of his life) I think Clare gets the short straw of this situation.

E: I agree 100% with all of that!

The Time Traveler's Wife is ultimately an enduring love story. What trials and tribulations do Henry and Clare face that are the same as or different from other "normal" relationships? 

H: There are so many, the first being that Clare's world life revolves around Henry. At six years old she is saddled with the responsibility of taking care of a grown man. Getting him food and clothes while also keeping him a secret. I know she is portrayed in a way that she loves it and loves him.  But I think it had to be written that way for this to be a romance, when if you think about it it doesn't seem very romantic. I don't think we get to know Clare as a character because of it. I think her whole character is boiled down to loving Henry and being an artist. Which isn't fair to her because it makes Clare a boring character. She's not even all that interesting with her family, who are also incredibly boring. It made it hard for me to not only connect with her but like her.

I see the dynamic with her being anxious that he has disappeared almost like a partner of someone in the military or a police officer. Not knowing if they'd come back home alive.The big difference is Clare may never know what happened to Henry because who knows where/when he has traveled to.

E: Considering the whole book now that we've finished it, Clare seems so one-dimensional. It makes me really sad that while a lot of their relationship is realistic, that it's all stuck behind this negative filter that  I can't look past... Like, was it actually fate? Or was it all forced? What if Henry wasn't actually a good guy. What if he was the toxic guy that everyone warned Clare about? What if this was all him tricking her?

H: Right?! The question of not knowing if it was actually fate but forced was often in my head. Henry has all the power/knowledge and Clare kind of just believes him because she's always believed him. It's like of like when you're a kid and a parent tells you something, you believe them, and you continue to believe them when you grow up because you've developed this trust. What if he was lying the entire time? What if Henry didn't tell Clare that the future was set in stone? Would she have given the guys she dated an actual chance instead of not taking them seriously? Would she still be married to him or someone else? He never gives the readers reason to really trust him, and continues to make bad decisions. He clearly shows he doesn't respect her enough to talk with her and get her opinion before making choices that will directly affect her life. Many come to mind but the two in particular are: going to get a vasectomy without talking to her about it because she wanted to keep having kids and he was worried it would kill her. I get he was scared she was putting herself in danger but it's her choice if she wants to continue trying for a child or not, it's her body. His "I know what is best for her" mind thought was crap. He often treated her like a child who couldn't make her own decisions and the second one is him taking Alba's DNA without Clare's permission. If they talked more, and he explained to her that he knew he was going to die, she probably would have agreed. Also, her problem was more the idea of Alba taking experimental drugs, I feel like he could have convinced her to give the doctor some of Alba's blood. Instead of being an adult and talking with his spouse he decided to go behind her back.

E: YEAH! That scene regarding the vasectomy got my blood boiling. That was straight up toxic. That's one of the things that was a major red flag for me with Henry and affected my overall thoughts about him. That and their first kiss... which was done out of anger and frustration. He was so careful up until that point. I'm sure the timelines got confusing as he lived it, but also what if that was just his true self shining through?

H: Their first kiss was awful. She was like 15-16 right? He was a grown man who couldn't keep his cool enough to understand he was talking to a teenager. The aggression behind their first kiss was icky to read along with being infuriating. She is a teenager, she pissed him off, and his idea of getting her to listen was to aggressively pounce on her and force her to kiss him? Yikes.

I already had some uncomfortable feelings when it came to him visiting her as a child especially once they started referring to each other as boyfriend/girlfriend once she hit 16. It was a really weird to read at times and I kept trying (and failing) to force myself to see the big picture of this weird situation. But at the same time, what if the future could be changed and Henry was pushing what he wanted? I think Henry being a shady guy makes it easy to have so many questions about the way the "fate" worked in this story. I didn't trust him for at least the last quarter of the book, maybe even the last half and it made me suspicious of everything he said. I also am not even sure if he's supposed to be the bad guy or not. I mean, he was not a good person before he met Clare, that's why everyone tells her to stay away from him. And we don't even really get the full picture of what happened between him and Ingrid. I hate Ingrid's story line because she's another woman being used to further along Henry's story line. We don't get to know what happened between them, what if he was really bad to her and he's using her depression as an excuse to basically just call her his crazy ex?

Okay! Those are the five questions for my side of our chat! To read the other side on Erica's blog just click here!

Thanks for reading! 

What do you think of our discussion? If you've read this book (and I assume you have if you've gotten this far) did you like it? If you agree/disagree please tell me in the comments below!