i wrote this book review for women24's book club. i write one for them every month. but they already had one for this book, so i will post it here.
When Claire is 20, she meets 28-year old Henry, her husband-to-be. He has never seen her. She has known him well, almost her entire life.
Henry suffers from a genetic disorder, Chrono-Displacement. This causes him to travel through time, into his own future or past. This sound very sci-fi, but surprisingly, it is not. The story is written from both Henry and Clare’s perspectives, and it jumps back and forth through time. Obviously it has the potential to be confusing, yet it is written so well that it all makes wonderful sense.
The focus of the story is not Henry’s time travel; it is about their relationship, and the love and the difficulty they share. Henry has no control over when or where he travels. But his older self often visits the young Clare, where he gets to know her, and she him. At first she is a child, but as she grows into a young woman, she comes to love him. It is through his time-travel, that he gets to know Clare, it is also through his time-travel that we get to know Henry. We see, as he does, how his mother dies, and we meet his daughter when he sees her at the age of 10, and talks to her, although she was not even born yet in his present.
The characters are so real. The book explores all the emotions they experience. Not only relating to his time-travel, but also their love and marriage, in times of better and worse, in sickness and health, and in birth and death.
I read this book a few months ago, and the story has been haunting me ever since. I can honestly say that it is one of the most memorable books I have ever read. It makes you laugh and cry, and think and wish, and dream and fear. I would recommend it to anybody, especially to the romantic at heart.
After loving the book, I watched the movie. As is usually the case, the movie was a little disappointing, and my husband, who had not read the book, found it very confusing. The book is just so much more complex, and many of the book’s themes are not even portrayed in the movie. The book was published in 2003, and the movie came out in 2009, and features Eric Bana and Rachael McAdams.
You can read more about the book and the author here.
You can order the book here.
my review for 'blood safari' - deon meyer
my review for 'the other side of the story' - marian keyes
what are you reading? what have you read that you loved?
