Jane's Great Re-read: The Time Traveler's Wife – Review

*Wipes eyes and blows nose*
Hello gang, well yes just finished the Time Traveler’s Wife again and I can report it still shreds me into tiny pieces.
When I was 25 this book meant everything I was in a very volatile stage of my life and it gave me comfort and helped me come to terms with lots of life stuff and help me cry. I have not and will not see the film because I am not prepared to tarnish my vision of the novel. For those reasons it was a very important book and has been a permanent addition to my list of favourites.
Coming back to it, was strange, my memory lets me down more than I realised and my more settled, more mature mind reading this thinks that there are times when Henry and Clare are jerks and I don’t remember feeling that way. Also the nature of the relationship when I examine it is somewhat squicky.
What I loved this time round was the foreshadowing which is done by a deftness of touch. There are a few lines which seem to be throwaway take on a huge significance on this reading. So much so that I imagined them as being printed in the book as red. I found the middle section with the babies to be much more traumatic this time. When I was younger babies were something for later. Now with so many friends having their own youngling related drama it hits closer to home and I am apparently much more susceptible to leaky eyes than I was back then.
The experience of reading this was one of read, read quicker absorb as quickly as possible and that hasn’t changed. The horrid realisation of what is going to happen and to see it unfold from different perspectives each a layer to the whole.
This book still gets to me. I am still a mess at the end. It doesn’t have the same power that it did, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a powerful novel and it still makes me pause consider my own life and what that means. I am an emo.