"I don't think that being a strong person is about ignoring your emotions and fighting your feelings. Putting on a brave face doesn't mean you're a brave person. That's why everybody in my life knows everything that I'm going through. I can't hide anything from them. People need to realise that being open isn't the same as being weak."

- Taylor Swift

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Book Review: The Time Traveller's Wife

Mood: tired
Listening to: 'Affirmation' by Savage Garden
Hungry for:...
Bella says: 'Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah....it's cold...'

More book reviews!

I've just finished The Time Traveller's Wife, which I've wanted to read for like FOREVER, and it's utterly brilliant. It proves that you don't need immortality or vampires to make a love story interesting.

But you might need a time traveller.

The book explores the life of Clare Abshire, who is married to Chicago librarian Henry DeTamble, who has a genetic defect that causes him to uncontrollably time travel. It looks at the complexities and difficulties their relationship faces due to his constant disappearances, and their struggles to conceive a child.

It's an amazingly romantic book, but not sickly sick or gooey - it's more homey, more simple, much more like waht a real relationship would be like. It's based on The Odyssey, a little, in that Clare compares herself to Penelope waiting for Odysseus to return. At the core of every great love is a great love story, so at the core of every great love story is a great love.

Henry DeTamble is a very unusual sort of man in that he's moody, poetic, bookish...not the classic hero, but a very loveable character nonetheless.

WARNING: this book is not for children. The language is unrelentlessly...rude. But a very, very, very good book.

1 comment:

Adelaide Dupont said...

Yes, the language would probably be quite blue as a sailor's tongue.

Very interesting.

Especially the observation on romance. Yes, I comment on the review, rather than the book.