February 11, 2010

The Time Traveler's Wife

I spent pretty much the entirety of this past weekend plowing thru Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife in a state of serious literary obsession.

I haven't really read much since finishing Infinite Jest, because it was just THAT good - and I was finding it hard to digest any other piece of literature without finding it meaningless and generally lousy. So, after a long break, I started on this one - something that's been on my list for ages. I had serious reservations. The whole time travel concept generally doesn't bode well - I figured it'd be confusing and corny and not much in the way of literary goodness.

I was wrong. Very wrong.

I bow down to Ms. Niffenegger.
I spent the whole 536 pages shaking my head at the complexity and inventive imagination that can create such a quickly moving, intensely crafted novel. How do you do it? I honestly don't know.

Somehow she made the time travel element work.
Not to say I didn't spend every moment trying to wrap my head around the concept. And then spent days after I was finished rethinking the plotline and all of the events and who was traveling in time to when and etc etc etc.
But it was good.
Very good.
And cathartic, to say the least.

I cried for 20 minutes after I was done.
And made Jared promise he would NEVER EVER time travel.

Read it.

4 comments:

Dorie Morgan said...

One of my favorite books ever! And my husband promised to never time travel in our wedding vows which confused all of our guests but was very, very important to me.

Anonymous said...

I never promised not to time travel! If I finally iron out the few remaining kinks I will definitely be traveling through time.

Chrono-Krick OUT.

kahlia said...

I also spend days (or sometimes hours) after finishing a book thinking about the plot/events/characters. Funny, somehow I thought I was the only one.

(By the way, Hi! I just found you via Peonies' Twitter feed. :)

Hello, I'm Emily Clare. said...

I vaguely remember making my husband promise the same thing.
Gorgeous book.