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The Time Traveler's Wife: Difference between revisions

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[[File:TheTimeTravelersWifeBookCover_514.jpg|frame]]
 
Once upon ''many'' times, there was a librarian named Henry. At the age of 5, Henry developed [[Involuntary Time Travel|Chrono Displacement Disorder]]. At any time, usually when under extreme stress, he can and will disappear and reappear at any time, mostly within his lifetime. [[You Can't Fight Fate|He can't ever change anything in the past]] and [[Foregone Conclusion|he knows something very bad happens to him in his forties]]. He's had to learn [[Justified Criminal|how to fight, pick locks, and steal for every time he's thrown somewhere]], as [[Can't Take Anything Withwith You|he is basically helpless, unarmed, and naked wherever he arrives]] (anything that isn't part of him stays behind--he had to have a tooth pulled just because he kept losing the filling). Sometimes he ends up getting to [[Deus Angst Machina|live through the same traumatic situations in his life]] [[Trauma Conga Line|over and over and over and over again]].
 
Those are the [[Blessed Withwith Suck|disadvantages]].
 
The advantage is that during his 30s, Henry time-traveled into the past of his wife, Clare, from ages 6 to 18. She grew to love him during these trips. And so, by the time they actually meet in real time when he's 28 and she's 20, she has known him all her life and knows that she ends up marrying him. Meanwhile, Henry is initially surprised and confused, having never met her before, but they soon fall in love and begin a shaky relationship. Eventually they try to have a child, which makes things even ''more'' complicated.
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A very intelligent science fiction novel by Audrey Niffenegger. (There's also [[The Film of the Book]], which received more mixed reviews.) Like the best science fiction, it explores all the complexities of its fantastic premise and its effects on otherwise perfectly ordinary people -- and [[Sci Fi Ghetto|you will not find it in the science fiction section of your library]]. (More often than not, it'll be stuck in general fiction -- or in the Romance section, effectively trading one Genre Ghetto for another.) It is highly recommended but it comes with a '''serious''' [[Tear Jerker]] warning.
 
The book has gone on to influence many [[Science Fiction]] authors, most notably [[Steven Moffat (Creator)|Steven Moffat]], who is now the lead writer of ''[[Doctor Who]]''.
 
{{tropelist}}
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* [[Bi the Way]]: Ingrid.
* [[Bilingual Bonus]]: Every few pages. Trilingual, really: English, German, and French.
* [[Blessed Withwith Suck]]: Henry can time-travel - but he doesn't have any control over it. His ability targets the most memorable places, people, and events in his life - the traumatic ones even more so than the positive ones. For every time he gets to visit his wife as a teenager or his infant daughter as a ten-year-old, he has to watch {{spoiler|his ex-girlfriend kill herself over him or see his mother die for the fiftieth time}}. And on top of all this, the story takes place in an [[You Can't Fight Fate|Eternist universe]] . Basically, everything that has ever happened, good and bad, was supposed to happen the way it did, and Henry can't do a damn thing about it. It doesn't take him long to wonder if the [[Cosmic Plaything|universe is actively f*** ing with him]].
* [[Bunny Ears Lawyer]]: Despite going missing for days at a time and being caught naked in the stacks multiple times, Henry is allowed to keep his job at the library and his co-workers take bets as to the REAL reason for his odd behaviour.
* [[But I Can't Be Pregnant]]: Getting a vasectomy doesn't work when you're an inadvertent time traveler.
* [[Can't Take Anything Withwith You]]: This causes Henry a ''lot'' of hell every time he time travels. Whenever he arrives he has to steal clothes, which causes him a lot of trouble. He also had to remove some teeth as he kept on leaving behind the fillings.
* [[Caught Withwith Your Pants Down]]: See [[Screw Yourself]] below.
* [[Childhood Marriage Promise]]: Sort of. When Henry, already married to Clare, travels back in time to Clare's childhood, he tells the child version of her that they are already married in the future. (Well, ''her'' future.)
* [[Cursed Withwith Awesome]]: Alba has an arguably better deal than Henry, as she can induce a time-travel episode and choose where she goes. She still has random time-travelling fits though, so YMMV.
* [[Comforting the Widow]]: Gomez {{spoiler|tries but fails.}}
* [[Daddy Had a Good Reason For Abandoning You]]: He couldn't help it.
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* [[Fantastic Romance]]
* [[Fille Fatale]]: Clare was a little like this as a teenager.
* [[Future Me Scares Me]]: [[Trope Namer]] [[Heroes (TV series)|Hiro]] has nothing on Henry:
{{quote| "Have you seen us in our forties?" <br />
"Yeah, I look like I've been folded, spindled and mutilated." }}
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* [[The Mourning After]]
* [[My Own Private I Do]]: For an unusual reason -- Clare and Henry have a civil ceremony after the big wedding because Henry completely missed the wedding, even though no one noticed because his future self showed up to take his place.
* [[Naked Onon Revival]]: A variant involving time travel rather than death. But even more unpleasant.
* [[Never a Self-Made Woman]]: [[The Time Travelers Wife]] isn't really about the wife...
* [[Never the Selves Shall Meet]]: An [[Averted Trope]]. Henry runs into himself all the time (see below) and teaches his younger self how to survive.
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