Audrey Niffenegger's book "The Time Travellers Wife" is her first novel. I had heard of the film of this title in the context of awards so took the book for a holiday read. If time travel were to be possible, and many people suspend disbelief on Saturdays for Dr Who, then the sort of emotional problems that would be created are illustrated in this novel.
For Henry time travel is a genetic disorder that causes him much discomfort and pain for when he time travels he arrives naked. The main story line is a romance between Henry and Clare built up when the participants meet out of chronological sequence long before they meet in real time. He of course wonders when they do meet how this stranger to him has known him for so long. She met him first when he was about 30 was 6 but he does not really meet here until she is 20. Confused? You needn't be as each short chapter indicates the date and the relative ages of the protagonists.
Basically this is a love story with the expected contemporary degree of “adult” sexual behaviour and with the complication of non-sequential time. For this reason some classify it as science fiction. The author examines issues of love, loss, and free will. Specifically it uses time travel to explore how people fail to communicate and can be distant in relationships, while also looking at deeper existential questions.
I found the novel provoked many interesting theological questions about the nature of time. If time is simply a chronology of events that follow one after another with causes leading to effects, how does God fit in? Is God, in the terms of process philosophy, present in the potentials for choice and change in every present moment. Or is, at the other extreme, God outside of time, looking down from eternity at the pages of the days of all time laid out and viewing all at once. Such a position would severely restrict the ability of humans to affect their destiny out of its predetermined courses. Would we still be free agents?
These are not new arguments as in various forms they go back to the early church fathers. Living in Scotland I am surrounded by Calvinists who accept pre-destination to some greater or lesser extent. Pre-destination seems to have invaded the Scottish secular psyche even in its modern contexts. In this novel the author does not let the time traveller make any changes to events that would influence the future yet paradoxically she does allow him to memorise the lottery numbers for the following week so that they can buy their new home!
It is an intriguing and amusing book but is without a properly thought out philosophy of time underpinning it. However an excellent holiday read.
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