here and now
6:52 PM | Tuesday, May 06, 2008
it has been a long time since i've last done this.. anyhoo, i'll be reviewing a book again :)
The Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
okey, so i got this book from Powerbooks. i really had no intention of buying a book at that moment but my feet dragged towards Powerbooks and i was there in front of the store so, why not try to check some books?
so, while inside Powerbooks, i kinda wanted to buy a book already since it's summer and aside from TV and PC, it's boring. i was scanning some books of familiar authors, Kinsella, Meyer, Coelho, Albom, Sparks but, nada. i really was about to leave the store when i saw this book on the 'featured books' table. i remember Lucy Torres and Mark Nelson talking about this book on one show on QTV (no, i don't watch that channel but i since Marc Nelson was there as their guest.. gaah, you know i had a thing for this guy before. TARA2 times. lol), i picked it up and read the preview at the back of the book (i do that a lot. :P)
"This is the extraordinary love story of Clare and Henry who met when Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry suffers from a rare condition where his genetic clock periodically resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. In the face of this force they can neither prevent nor control, Henry and Clare's struggle to lead normal lives is both intensely moving and entirely unforgettable."
the book caught my attention cause:
a. just recently that time did i see Lake House (Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves) and you know how Lake House was. present and past (for Bullock) while present and future (Reeves). and i really like fiction-ish stuffs together with romance cause you know its not just like those ordinary romance stories.. you know there's gotta be an adventure or thrill added. so, seeing this book that dealt with time.. it just made me more curious.
b. i find the sense of unpredictability very interesting because unlike those time travel movies, they control where they wanna go until something messes up and they're stuck in that time. this one, he can't control his time travels..
and so. the book made use of Clare's time frame for the succession of events (cause it would be so confusing if the author used Henry's) and it's really really cool cause every once in a while Henry time travels. he reaches the new places naked and goes back naked. there's like a principle behind it that you can't bring something from the future to the present or something from the past to the present cause it would mess up the events that would've happened in a normal setting. like, imagine someone bringing a cellphone back to the 1960's. that's would cause changes of the events in the future.
and i have discovered something very true and very sensible that is often times neglected in movies or books that dealt with time travels.. you know how the things go like, you go back to the past to change something so things would be different in the future, yes? or like how Sandra Bullock sent that letter to Keanu Reeves to avoid his own death, yes? these events suggest that the past, present, and future are like different dimensions that one thing that had already happened could be changed. it's like suggesting that we
can change what we've done to run from all the dreadful things that what our original actions may have brought. well in fact, no.
"the choices we're working here are a block universe, where past present and future all coexist simultaneously and everything has already happened". this is the part in this fiction book that can somehow be applied to what we have in reality. life is like a record player wherein everything is recorded on the first hand and there is no button allowing us to rewind and record over something that has already been recorded. it's like a driving on a one way road wherein you can't go back the other way to watch something you have missed while passing by cause there is only one direction that you can follow and you can only pass one place once. do you get the analogy? and the only books that i have read that took this principle and gave importance to it are this book and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (if you have read or seen HP3, i can see you nodding right now)
because of this principle, it made me realize a lot of things. one is that we must choose our decisions today wisely for today is our tomorrow's past and what
is now can change what the future holds but the future can never change what the past has brought. and that we must never take things and people for granted cause everything can only happen once and these people can just go away from our lives in a blink and by then, there can be no means to bring them back. so cherish the moments that you are with them while it's not yet too late cause we really can never know wht happens next.
the book also teaches a lot about families. and it's just so moving and inspiring. :)
although, this book has 518 pages and the font size is a bit smaller than the ordinary ones so it's really long. but i found myself enjoying reading each page of the book cause it's like reading a diary of someone with such an unusual life.
so all in all, i really liked this book and i really admire Aubrey Niffenegger for her wild imagination. but despite it's wildness,
it still can make sense. im giving this book
4.5 stars. :)
i suggest this book to anyone who is up for a good and long read and can easily understand and analyze. and by the way, i just learned this recently.. they are actually making a movie for this book and will show on December 2008. starring Rachel McAdams (The Notebook, Mean Girls).
"..in the past we can only do what we did, and we can only be there if we were there." does that make sense to you? *wink
