Apparently I've become a lazy reader

[ladymercury_10]

So I borrowed The Time Traveler's Wife from the library, and all it's done is sit on my parents' coffee table.  I got about a chapter in and gave up.  I just can't muster up the interest.  Which feels odd to me, since there are so many reasons that I should love it.  It has time travel, the fantasy/science fiction element, lovely local details (I'm from Chicago), etc.  It comes to me highly recommended by one of my favorite teachers ever.  And it's supposed to be well-written; literary fiction and whatnot.  But I just can't get into it.  I wonder if it's just long, and that puts me off, or if it has too much sex for my taste, or if I've read one too many bad reviews. 

Anyone a TTTW fan or hater and want to tell me why I should/shouldn't just get on with it? 

Comments

[kaffy_r]

You're from Chicago? So am I (at last for the past 29 years.)

I'm in the hater's column on this one for many reasons. First: she does have a gift for vignettes, and individual scenes. But she doesn't have a talent for tying them together in a way that's ultimately satisfying. The first time I was actually moved was practically at the last scene, and that isn't enough of a payoff, because it was almost by accident. Talented writers who don't care enough to use that talent to create a unified whole are apt to make me crazy. Or angry.

Second - and this comes from a lover of the SF genre, and I've been told that means it's just the natterings of a prisoner of the genre who doesn't appreciate it when a mainstream author takes the genre's conventions and fucks them up completely uses them in a bold new way, so take it as you will - she is like every other damned dilettante who figures they can waltz in, play with someone else's tools, and use them incorrectly because they're artists and the genre writers who use the tools correctly are just hacks. And then gets praised by mainstream critics for being "fresh" and "genre-bending." There are any number of skiffy or fantasy authors who have twice the subtlety, twice the knowledge of the human heart, and twice the elegance that Audrey Niffenegger has, but they get dismissed because of the genre in which they choose to work.

And, if they're going to make time travel a core part of their story they will either pay attention to the conventions of time travel if they're paying lip service to a scientific framework, or they'll play it completely as a fantasy. They won't try to have it both ways.

In a word? Argh.

Also, and this was pointed out to me after I'd developed a distaste for the book, but added to the bad taste in my mouth, the lead female character displays a selfishness that is mind-blowingly, cosmically horrible.

Not that I've thought a lot about it. Ahem.

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's fun!

What would you say are the conventions she misuses? Just the time travel, or others as well? I agree that the time travel aspect is weird. It would be easier for me to believe if she just wrote it as something magical or unexplained than by trying to make it some kind of brain disorder.

I feel like everyone who liked it, liked it for reasons I should, and everyone who hated it, hated it for reasons I would. Ahahaha.

Thanks for the thoughts!

[kaffy_r]

It's been ages since I read the book, but I think the time travel conventions are the sole SF tropes that she misuses. It's just that she does so in such a bloody spectacular way.

The emotional resonance of the story is affecting only up to a point, and then I start wondering about the insularity and self-satisfaction of the characters involved (said self-satisfaction being an underlying feel rather than something outright. It just lies there, making the "oh lawsy, what a terrible fate is dealt us two star-crossed lovers" more than a bit irritating.

If you ever do finish the book, or see the movie, I'd be interested in your thoughts on decisions the couple make after they are married. (Further deponent saith naught, because ... spoilers ....)

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Thanks. And yes, if I manage to finish it, I will certainly let you know. Right now I am leaning towards...not reading it *right now* because I have library books I need to finish before heading back to school, and TTTW is so popular I know I can get it from the library out there.