Parenthetical.net

As the project for this spring break was, “read lots of books that aren’t for 13-year-olds,” I finally finished Time Traveler’s Wife, which people have been bugging me about since it came out. (Thank you Paula and Anna and everyone else who told me to read it. I would be all about some discussion, should you feel so inclined.) I informed E that I was coming over last night so that I could finish the last 100 pages and then get a nice long hug, which was a good idea because by the end (and at several points before the end), I was bawling.

It pushes all my buttons, really. Love story between flawed, believable people who live their own lives and do more than just moon about over each other (not that there isn’t plenty of that too, but it seems to come from a real place). Roundabout story-telling device: I love knowing what’s going to happen and then seeing it happen, which is of course unavoidable in a story about one time-traveling person and one linear-time person.

Also, science fiction that isn’t marketed as science fiction, so literary types who don’t think they like “that stuff” read it and are impressed. Ha-ha! Well-thought-out time-travel, which is nearly impossible. I have read and watched a lot of time-travel stories in my science-fiction-consumption career, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one with no holes in it. But I can’t find any holes or need for hand-waving in this (once you’ve accepted the core premise that Henry has a genetic condition that makes him unwillingly time-travel, of course). He time-travels naked because only things that are part of his body travel (which eliminates the whole “well, why doesn’t the bit of pavement he’s standing on come along?” conundrum), and the author even includes a line about how he has to have a tooth pulled because his filling keeps getting left behind. That’s thorough!

Spoilers (for this and the end of Babylon 5)… (and seriously, don’t read these if you haven’t read the book, because it’s excellent and you ought to)

And at the end, there’s the sense of “one last time,” the knowing when death will come and even knowing how, but being powerless to stop it. I kept thinking of Babylon 5, when Sheridan and Delenn know his 10 years are up — how do you get through that, knowing you have decades left (and in Delenn’s case, a century or so), but the person you love is leaving for good? And oh god, the scene at the end, 83-year-old Clare waiting every day of her life for the promised last visit from Henry…one last time. Which also hits my fetish for stories that leap large swaths of time, like the last episode of Six Feet Under when you see how all the characters die. Oh, man, I’m crying again.

There’s a reassurance in loving someone who knows some of the future, who can say, “I’ve seen our child at 10 and she’s healthy and beautiful” and you can relax a little for those 10 years. But that reassurance doesn’t balance out the dread of knowing when they’re going to leave. I’m terrified every day that E, or someone else I love, is going to have a horrible accident or get sick and die and the whole shape of my future will change. But I think I’d rather be afraid but be able to convince myself that I’m imagining it, than know.

I’m emotionally involved in every (good) book I read, and I love books that wreck me. But this has been 3 in a row now (the fourth Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and the second Jacky Faber — shut up; they’re better and more intense than you think), and I think I need something fluffy with a happy ending.

Question: E and I were discussing this this morning — can you think of a good adult or older YA book that has an unreservedly happy ending? No bittersweetness, no “we survived, yay, but pause and remember the people who didn’t”? Because we couldn’t. Maybe we just don’t read enough fluff.