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Henry has a genetic disorder that makes him involuntarily travel back and forth in time, visiting and revisiting moments of emotional significance. He meets Claire when she is six and he is thirty-six. They're married when she catches up to him in realtime in her early twenties.
If you'd asked me about this book midway through, I would have snapped something irritable about those creepy goddamn books where a much older man is the close childhood friend of a girl he later marries. At the end of the book I'll concede that yes, Henry does visit Claire from the time she's six until he deflowers her at eighteen, but that the tables are turned when they connect in linear time and Claire has all these memories of a man that the pre-Claire alcoholic Henry doesn't have. This makes the whole thing less gender creepy, but still creepy. There's nothing more romantic than effectively creating your remembered fabulous mate out of the person they aren't yet?
Actually, you know, it's a really well-written book on a couple of levels. The prose is firm but kind of dreamy, and there's some neat background work with Claire's family in particular. But I was never more than moderately interested, and creepiness aside I think that's because the book did nothing exciting or original for me with love, time travel, or destiny. And it really could have, because what a great idea.
If you'd asked me about this book midway through, I would have snapped something irritable about those creepy goddamn books where a much older man is the close childhood friend of a girl he later marries. At the end of the book I'll concede that yes, Henry does visit Claire from the time she's six until he deflowers her at eighteen, but that the tables are turned when they connect in linear time and Claire has all these memories of a man that the pre-Claire alcoholic Henry doesn't have. This makes the whole thing less gender creepy, but still creepy. There's nothing more romantic than effectively creating your remembered fabulous mate out of the person they aren't yet?
Actually, you know, it's a really well-written book on a couple of levels. The prose is firm but kind of dreamy, and there's some neat background work with Claire's family in particular. But I was never more than moderately interested, and creepiness aside I think that's because the book did nothing exciting or original for me with love, time travel, or destiny. And it really could have, because what a great idea.
