The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003)

Written By: Audrey Niffenegger
Published By: Harcourt Books

The Time Traveler’s Wife is a love story about a woman who is perfectly normal in every way and her husband who is not so normal.  He happens to be a time traveler, but not in the traditional mad scientist sense.  Instead, he time travels to places he’s been before when beset with any amount of stress.  This means that any trip he makes to the past or future is strictly involuntary and unpredictable.  The novel focuses on how the husband’s time traveling is both the cause of their relationship the source of all its problems.  And it’s brilliant.

So when two people get married, the general consensus is that the relationship will have a bunch of ups and downs.  There is a lot of sex, a lot of fighting, and a lot of compromise, sometimes kids.  Countless generations of families have beat around this bush for so long that there isn’t a whole lot of intrigue, a whole lot of “newness” in it.  Sure, you got your basic questions: “How did you two little lovebirds meet?” being one such question.  And, with perhaps starstruck eyes, one of the askees will tell you, “well this one time we met at a Holiday Inn Express, s/he was going that way and I was going that way…” and then they would keep running their mouth about how awesome or how horrible things turned out.  Yawn.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is pretty similar, but features way more interesting people at its core.  The characters of Henry and Clare DeTamble are both charming, cultured, and overall very pleasant in the way one would hope a young married couple would be.  They aren’t superheroes or supergeniuses in spite of one’s ability to move through the ether of time.  Actually, Henry is very humble about (if not totally resentful of) his condition in spite of knowing that it is the source of all the happiness he would ever know.  Clare is a pistol, well-off but not obnoxious, maybe a little naive at times, surprisingly gutteral at others, but makes for a sound pairing with her chrono-impaired soulmate.  Their personalities are distinct and compelling as they make their confessions over the course of the whole lifespans together, and their stories come through at the hands of some really terrific, careful, and inspired writing.

The time traveling aspect is also treated with great care, having evolved a personality unto itself.  There is some self-awareness carefully weaved into the narrative that aims to keep your eyesockets from rolling out of your skull, lest you are used to stupid heroes not capable of selfishly applying their powers for the betterment of their station.  This novel has plenty of that, even boldly addressing certain issues that would be unique only to time travelers in some rather surprising ways.  But it also adds some restrictions to Henry’s ability to move around time, even adding some danger in the mix to offer yet another facet to his already carefully manicured personality.

But what really makes this novel work is how it meticulously sets up and pays off even the smallest little character quirks or traits, harnessing the power of time to open and close the loose ends of what is ostensibly a closed loop of a story.  You are given just enough information to presume you know how it will all turn out, but even as more things are revealed, you are never quite sure if that’s really going to happen.  Or, more frequently, some time traveling thing will happen and you’ll keep that filed away to see if it ever gets resolved, no doubt to write an angry email to the author once it never comes.  And so, you keep turning and turning the pages, wondering if what you are expecting will come to pass, whether this future that this book reluctantly shares is actually going to be real.

One of the big questions of The Time Traveler’s Wife revolves around this idea of fate.  Think about it, if some guy or girl entered your life from another dimension and told you that you were married to them in the distant future, how would you feel about that?  Both characters more or less grapple with that, and the joy from reading this novel is grappling with that concept ourselves.  Are our futures already written for us?  Do we have a chance to change them?  Or is changing them part of the plan?  Should we ever know our future? And if we do know the future, should we at any point share that information with anyone?

In a good work of literature, there are underlying themes that challenge us to explore the world in a different way, to become people that we are not and possibly could never be.  To ask the important questions and to get us to think about the differences of our lives and how our unwritten futures toddle ahead, forming endless possibilities just as endless possibilities are snuffed out every waking second of every day as we decide a yes or a no or a maybe.  The Time Traveler’s Wife asks these questions by giving us the ability to see the world unfold through the eyes of two charming and lovely individuals who may carry the answer within themselves, who might offer some reassurance that defying fate might be possible, even for them.  It is nearly perfect.

A

Choice Passages:

     “Clare takes the Thermos cup away from me. She pours herself half an inch of coffee and takes a cautious sip. ‘Ugh,’ she says. ‘This is disgusting. Is it supposed to taste like this?’
     ‘Well it usually tastes less ferocious. You like yours with lots of cream and sugar.’
     Clare pours the rest of the coffee into the Meadow and takes a doughnut. Then she says, ‘You’re making me into a freak.'”

     “I’m stomping the living shit out of a large drunk suburban guy who had the effrontery to call me a faggot and then tried to beat me up to prove his point. We are in the alley next to the Vic Theater. I can hear the Smoking Popes’ bass leaking out of the theater’s side exits as I systematically smash this idiot’s nose and go to work on his ribs. I’m having a rotten evening, and this fool is taking the brunt of my frustration.”

     “I’m standing in the bathroom, shivering in my slip and brushing my teeth. In the mirror I can see Henry lying on the bed. He’s snoring. I spit out the toothpaste and rinse my mouth. Suddenly it comes over me: happiness. And the realization: we’re married. Well, I’m married, anyway.”

St. Charles at Dusk (2011)

Written by: Sarah M. Cradit
Published by: Createspace

St. Charles at Dusk is a romance mystery novel that revolves around a spineless clueless playboy millionaire and the absolutely perfect author avatar billionaire heiress that he just can’t stop thinking about.  It is a romance in that it tells the story of these two star-crossed lovers and the inconveniences that come between them; it is a mystery in that the inconveniences that come between them involve amnesia and a presumably jealous rival’s insistence that their time together before ‘the accident’ that created their predicament is either inaccurately remembered or never existed at all.

The theme of this novel is one of memories and of lost time, the bulk of which is explored via a series of flashback sequences within flashback sequences within a larger flashback sequence when these two characters reunite after a longish furlough at the top of the book.  While they are presumably staring coldly at each other in a dimly lit room in a New Orleans mansion–something that rich people do I think–Oz the narrator brings the audience up to speed on what has happened with their on again, off again relationship over the previous 10ish years in 300 pages or less, ostensibly conveying just why this relationship happens to be special and why these two long lost lovers are not, in fact, enormous flakes.  The challenge for the audience, aside from putting this relatively simple mystery together, comes in when it has to decide whether or not two enormously wealthy people with their heads lodged so firmly up their asses and who have nothing but time on their hands to contemplate the meaning of will-they-or-won’t-they are worth the effort.

Personally, I don’t find rich people to be all that interesting.  There is a certain National Enquirer intrigue that comes with peeking into the top and seeing how the other half lives; but, in a love story especially, the wealth becomes a serious obstacle in giving a crap about people who are used to their frilly maids, their 200-room manors overlooking the plebian provinces, and the consummate navel-gazing wankery that goes with the lamentations of having a perfect (if not a tad sheltered) lifestyle.  One where character development consists of ravenous consumption of the high arts and sciences, one where any chance or risk that is taken comes with a not-so-dangerous pratfall that is lined with a million and one feathered pillows, one where every action has a meaningless consequence but must be discussed anyway because goddammit the whole bloodline might be but probably isn’t at stake.

You could say that I might be jealous of the excess and comfort and recklessness that is afforded to someone who has nothing to lose and is practically perfect already, and who wouldn’t be?  When blessed with every ample opportunity to be happy with what I have been given and what I already have, I’d probably fuck it up, too.  And that’s why I can relate somehow to the dashing millionaire playboy Oz’s dilemma of having prize after prize thrown brazenly at his feet, only to be spellbound by the obsessively beautiful and intellectually flawless Adrienne who manipulates and dominates every waking second of his life, who colors his history in such a way that to be without her he is very much a basket case.  What I can’t relate to, and probably never will, is the overblown serendipity that underlines Oz’s every action and the diminishing returns of failure after failure as he dismisses just how lucky a person he is to have everything in the world a person could possibly want but to squander every ample opportunity to better his situation because some arbitrary sense of bumbling pride.  He doesn’t suffer at the hands of his mistakes much, if at all.

Every romance novel [that I can think of off the top of my head] has some kind of obstacle that opposes the joining of two lovers in holy matrimony, and St. Charles at Dusk is no exception and even boldly offers more than one.  First, the nature of Oz and Adrienne’s relationship is contentious in that Oz comes from a family of wealthy lawyers and Adrienne comes from a family of Oz’s family’s clients, who are also good friends.  It is revealed that the client is zillionaire Charles Deschanel, and that Adrienne is one of four illegitimate heirs to the family legacy, conceived with a maid or something because he got bored with his wife.  Second, Oz and Adrienne grew up together and are separated in age by 5 years; only she is underage when their romance begins for the first time, which spells trouble for a dynasty already riddled with scandal.  Naturally, the father does not approve of the affair, even though Oz is probably the best person for her.  Third, Adrienne disappears out of the blue one day which abruptly brings the relationship to a halt.  The plot revolves around her return two or three years later, stricken with amnesia, and her quest to find herself after living in the care of some plebs, not knowing that she is the sole living heiress to a family fortune, and selfishly demolishing the emotions of every person she comes in contact with.

It is within this turmoil that the novel gains its traction.  Where did she go?  What did she do?  And why is she now deciding to find out the truth about the sixteen years of her past that have been lost to her mind at the time of her disappearance?  Unfortunately, the mystery is meandering and needlessly complicated, driven by a narrative that bounces from his point of view to hers across a spectrum of years that dissipate any tensions it aims to build with a voice that is at times brooding, at times mechanical, and at times apathetic.  This is exacerbated by the decision to fill in the blanks of Oz’s first person narrative with patches of Adrienne’s third person narrative to better supplement his story.  If this move was meant to throw the audience off the scent, it certainly isn’t obvious in retrospect. Further gumming up the works are the descriptions of the various provinces and set pieces around New Orleans that are detailed but feel abstract or obligatory.  A limited cast of auxiliary characters is introduced throughout and they are interesting in their own right, but are also not used to their fullest potential and kind of just discarded nonchalantly when they are no longer a need or a threat.

So is a man and a woman coming together who have everything in the world and nothing but time, convenience, and opportunity, something to get really intrigued by?  I guess it’s a matter of perspective.  Some people completely dig the fantasy of romance and true love and ultimate happiness, that two characters that were imagined for each other can overcome tumultuous odds stacked heavily against their favor, regardless of whether or not these characters could ever be considered ‘real.’  St. Charles at Dusk is a story about love–at the very least there is love in it–but there is something lacking here, some real tragedy, some real grit, that holds back its ambition.  I could not say that it swayed me to behold love and all that that entails in a certain way, but I could say that it has left me disappointed in myself for not having been born into a life of uninhibited perfection.

C+

P.S. I’d like to thank a redditor for the term ‘navel-gazing wankery.’ I’m trying to find your comment sir and credit you properly, but I can’t find it and I’m sorry. 😦

Choice Passages

“She pulled off the cloak and carelessly tossed it across the back of my leather sofa in the sitting room. Neurotically, I was one step behind her, wiping the raindrops off of the couch and hanging her cover on the oak coat rack, where it belonged.”

“The more time I spent dating, the less time I gave my personal studies. The behavior that had once defined me slowly became less a part of me until there was no room left for it all.”

“She was absolutely, without a doubt, the smartest human being I had ever known … She had also studied ancient history in her father’s expansive library at Ophélie, and like me, had longed to find someone who found it worthwhile … It was painful for Adrienne to be forced to remain in this world of children when mentally she had already checked out of it.”

“‘Why apologize for what I am?’ she told me later when I asked her why she was often not more delicate with those she loved, more sensitive to the insecurities of others. I apologized for things I was responsible for as well as the things I wasn’t. I was stuck in a perpetual pattern of second-guessing everything I ever did, saying sorry for things that weren’t really my fault.” (Note: Adrienne is 11 and not very adorable in this sequence.)

“‘But,’ I continued, ‘Sometimes I wonder if there isn’t something else out there that I would have been better at. Perhaps even something that would make me happier than this. Yet, if I did that, if I went out and searched for whatever that was, what would my father think? He’s always given me everything I could ever need or ask for and never asked anything in return.”

Cinderella (1950)

Cinderella is the first feature-length motion picture that Disney produced since Bambi that wasn’t a package film. It tells the story of a gorgeous pin-up model who talks to animals and is resigned to doing menial chores around the house at the behest of her vain step-mother and -sisters since the passing of her dad. When the local royal family puts out an invitation for all the women in the country to attend a lavish ball in an effort to marry its lone prince off, Cinderella is prevented from attending. Then something about a fairy godmother and glass slippers and stroke of midnight and pumpkin carriages and wishes and dreams and general superficiality. This particular movie was adapted from a folk tale written by Charles Perrault in 1697 (Wikipedia’s my friend), but the narrative has been around for much longer.

I’m a little disheartened that Disney had to resort to using talking fluffy animals to work out several key plot points. While talking animals are present in virtually every folk tale narrative, it just seems a little too convenient that animals can come to the aid of beautiful people in times of need. The focus was a little too heavily pushed from the animals’ points of view; in fact, this could’ve been called The Adventures of Jaq and GusGus: The Movie. The problem seems to lie in Cinderella’s lack of any real personality. She just sits there on the dirty-ass floor of the chateau and accepts her punishment without ever taking steps to resolve her own problems. Hey, I got a solution to everything for you: Just leave!

Your kids will probably like Cinderella, even though its fundamental lack of girl power and hopeless romance in its theme could be debated when taken in a modern context. The movie holds up fairly well with some solid animation and nicely done modeling, the overall arc is pretty fluid, and the sound and music are both as enchanting as ever. At the very least, it’s not a package film with wildly different emotional tones!

B

Dark Shadows (2012)

No, it’s not about her, but I liked the picture.

Dark Shadows is a vampire film about a rich business guy whose family is cursed because he rejected the love of a crazy witch in the 1700s. She turned him into a vampire, murdered his parents in cold blood, and sealed him away in a coffin for the rest of eternity. In 1971, he is broken loose by some hapless construction workers and returns to his manor, reuniting with his great-great-great-great…great(?) grandchildren. He discovers that the witch is still around, having built a competing business that is slowly driving his family into the ground, and he must find a way to restore his family’s honor and save his own business.

This film is based on a corny TV soap opera produced in Britain in the 60’s and 70’s of the same name, same characters, and similar premise. There was also a miniseries that lasted only one season in the early 90’s featuring Ben Cross, Joanna Going, and a very young Joseph Gordon-Levitt (which I fucking LOVED, by the way). Given its soap opera and old timey British roots, Dark Shadows has a very niche following that is comprised of probably what is the smallest audience imaginable. Rebooting this franchise seemed almost a no-brainer since no one today has likely even heard of the show before.

Yet, a lot of people were admittedly nervous when this film was first announced. Tim Burton is working with Johnny Depp, Danny Elfman, and Helena Bonham Carter… again. WHAT KIND OF HIJINKS WILL THEY GET THEMSELVES INTO THIS TIME LOL? They’re probably just gonna piss on the “legacy” of Barnabus Collins and rush the franchise into a coffin in the name of a quick buck. I am pleased to report that the overt stylings of the Burton dynasty are actually quite subdued here, and kind of think he sort of took the advice of that small group of people that railed against the Willy Wonka and the Alice in Wonderland films and toned down his presence. Yeah, there are winks and nods here and there, but overall I approve of this film. Its plot is a little mechanical, but the characters work well enough together, and the fish-out-of-water scenario was played relatively straight. Most of all, though, it’s actually quite fun. Sometimes I like to have fun.

B+

The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

The Adjustment Bureau is a romance movie about a guy who discovers that there is a seedy underbelly to the world that we know: an organization is tasked to adjust people’s life events in accordance with a mysterious doctrine called The Plan. When he meets the woman of his dreams and falls in love with her in a chance encounter, he immediately questions whether or not his fate is just when it’s revealed to him that they are destined to never be together. The bureau has orders to stop him if he tries to make it work, and so begins his mission to defy the Plan and, by extension, his true destiny.

It was fun exploring the theme of fate as depicted in this film. Matt Damon isn’t doing anything particularly special (he runs a lot YAY!), but his female lead Ms. Emily Blunt is completely charming and can really light up a room. As a romance movie and by extension a “chick flick,” The Adjustment Bureau is par for the course in this respect and if you ask me, it’s comfortable.

The film is also designed to give away that warm and fuzzy feeling that maybe we ourselves can be held responsible for our own decisions, that an unseen hand does not control everything, and that maybe we can take charge of our own lives. After all, if we don’t like what’s in the Plan for us, we should have the power to change it and maybe break free from the Vice of God so we may forge our own pathway through the stars. But maybe defying The Plan is The Plan.  What if this is all a big trick?  My god, it’s full of lies!

B+

Fun and Fancy Free (1947)

Fun and Fancy Free is not so much a movie as it is a sort of exhibition, the sort made by Disney’s B-Team.  It’s a feature-length cartoon divided into two distinct parts: one where a circus bear escapes captivity to pursue his roots in the natural wilderness and another where Mickey Mouse & friends go on an adventure based on the Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale.  There is also an intermission where the studio again tries to intersperse a live action element where the creep factor is turned up to 11.

There isn’t a whole lot of praise that can be dumped on this film.  It feels a lot more efficient than previous Disney endeavors of the time–the animation is hokey and the two stories are fairly simplistic.  I think Disney has wholeheartedly embraced the cartoons-are-for-kids motif at this point: the first teaches us how cuddly bears fall in love in addition to dealing with jealous alpha males, while the second is a David & Goliath type of story (as was Beanstalk) that shows us we can overcome just about anything larger than ourselves with wit, gumption, and bravado.

However there is a positive thing I can say about this movie: that “Disney Magic” is out in full force.  I’m talking about that angelic and whimsical chorus of ladies singing whimsically through a tin can as our heroes deal with their problems.  The whole first half is nothing but a musical in this vein and it is very pleasant.  It actually reminds me of my childhood due to having seen many of these older Disney films when I was just a little guy.  Whimsical notes are carried by whimsical visuals, and it is almost hypnotic in its execution.

I think your kids will like this movie, but in today’s world they might also get bored.  These types of cartoons just aren’t as engaging as they were in the past.  The bigger problem I see with this one is the live action segment–there’s this sequence where this guy is entertaining his daughter or something at a birthday party.  It’s just him, her, and three ventriloquist dummies that all talk out of turn.  The creep factor rises when it’s revealed that these dummies don’t require the ventriloquist to be attached in order to talk and behave.  The little girl enjoys this, but I really think that whole set is haunted.

C+