The Time Traveler's Wife

[Ometiklan]

I just wanted to point out that in a couple of shots of the trailer Eric Bana has noticeably gray hair at the temples. To me that looks like make-up graying and an indication that they will be portraying different ages of time-traveling Henry. Though, i didn't notice longer hair Henry.

 

[Sakrysta]

Remind me - "NYE 2000"?

I expect Henry's last time travel to be extremely painful. I can't imagine how they're going to pull that one off on film. There's a hint of it in the trailer, but I wonder if they didn't modify it a bit.

I'm curious to see if they'll deal with the frostbite and his feet. It occurs to me that the way Henry died could just as easily have happened without that handicap, and I wonder if they'll cover it. I hope they do, but it's another element that would provide definite challenges. The biggest contribution that handicap made to the story (in an event-related way) was Henry's inability to keep Ingrid from killing herself.

 

[Ethros]

Thanks to this thread I bought the book last week and just finished reading it last night. Have to agree on the excellent front, really enjoyed it. So thanks for this thread otherwise I wouldn't have had heard of it.

I started really enjoying it, but I did find about half way through, around the time they get married, I started to get a bit frustrated with it. I fully got the picture of what was going, yet the plot just seemed to be going nowhere for a while. It picked up after a time, but I think some of it was stretched out a bit. It could easily have been edited down a little, and there were a couple of instances where the "chick flick" vibe crept in too much and made me roll my eyes (I think it was the stuff with Clare's mum dying.)
But they're minor quibbles, still loved it.


Just a question though- what was really the point of the Dr Kendrick subplot? It didn't seem to go anywhere. In the end it did nothing at all for Henry, and we never even found out if it was able to help Alba or not...
Also I might have missed something but toward the end of Henry's life he was often described as really thin and weak; his workmates thought he was dying. Why was this? Was he actually ill? Was it the drugs from Kendrick? Effects of all the time travel?


Oh yeah, and I presume its up to the readers imagination, but what was Henry doing with himself when he was caught by his father? Blowing each other or something?
And also, did his father see both of them, or just the present Henry?



Just watched the trailer for the movie again though now I've finished the book, and it looks awesome. Bana is more or less how I pictured Henry, whereas McAdams isn't exactly how I saw Clare, but she'll do. Can't wait to see it.

 

[Ryan]

I guess I'm in a distinct minority, because the book ultimately creeped me out. I enjoyed it a lot while I was reading it, for all the emotional depth to the love story that people have mentioned, until I started contemplating the fact that Henry cultivated Clare from a child to be his mate. It began to seem like a kind of pedophilia.

That's an interesting perspective. But, remember two things - one, Henry did everything he could to throw Claire OFF that path - not giving him clues as to how to find him in the future, not telling him they were married (at least, not until she was a teenager), and resisting her constant seductions when she's a teenager. Second, everything is determined already. You can't change the future. So, there was no choice in the matter - Claire was going to be Henry's wife no matter what Henry did.

It's easy to overlook that goes the other direction too; Claire was going to be Henry's wife no matter what he did. The book spends so much time with young Claire and Henry it's easy to forget for him one day a stranger arrived who was in a years long relationship with him and knew more about Henry's future than he did. It's almost like a shotgun wedding.

It's a quirk of time travel. For each one of them the other initiated the relationship.

 

[Ryan]

Interesting idea: what if Clare simply avoided ever going into that room where she sees Henry last?

It's that sense of fatalism in the book that sits uneasily with me. That the characters are powerless to do anything -- and know they're powerless -- because events have already happened from someone else's perspective.

It keeps the time travel consistent and adds a big heaping helping of foreboding and helplessness.

I definitely agree it's overwhelming at times though (the whole last quarter of the book feels like some sort of dreadful countdown). It also felt like an excuse for the author to get some plot points in "just because" ('Hey, look! We're rich now!').