Yeah, this book has been on shelves for quite some time, but I’ve just gotten around to reading it – it was our book group’s monthly pick. Hmmm, where to start? For starters, I enjoyed the book – not sure if I enjoyed reading it because of it’s unusual style or because of the storyline. Although I enjoyed it, it took me until about half way through the book get into it, or even just understand what was happening with the time line, for that matter.
Although this isn’t very important, I wanted to mention the book’s title. I was expecting the book to be about ‘the Wife’, but it was written from the perspectives of Henry (the ‘Traveler’) and Clare (the ‘Wife’) equally. I’m still trying to understand the title. Any thoughts? I like to link the title or understand the reason for the author’s choice when I read the book. Not sure why it really matters to me, but it does. Ok, I digress.
So, back to the meat and potatoes of the story, beginning with the main characters of the book, Henry and Clare. Henry was a time traveler who popped in and out of his past (mostly) and met up with his wife Clare when he was an adult and she was a young child. Henry visits her often and reveals to her that they would later be married. Clare, the daughter of a wealthy lawyer and bipolar and distant mother, clung to the idea of knowing her future was with Henry.
The author tells the stories of each ‘travel’ with a heading revealing the year and ages of Henry and Clare. This, because it obviously couldn’t be in chronological order, made the book a little difficult to follow. About halfway through the book, Clare meets up with Henry in real time, she was in her early twenties and Henry in his late twenties. Clare knew Henry when they met in real time, because he visited her for over a decade, yet he didn’t know her, because he didn’t start visiting her until his 30’s. Catch all that? Yep, it wasn’t easy. I found myself paging backwards often to make sense of the time line.
Henry would travel without warning, dumping him into precarious situations, naked and struggling to gather clothes and food and waiting to be dumped back into real time. Henry disappeard often when he was under stress and when Clare needed him most – when she miscarried, for instance. Clare, an artist and a bit of a recluse, spent much of her life just waiting for Henry to return. The couple was deeply in love and tried to keep Henry’s traveling secret from everyone, which consumed so much of their life.
Overall, Clare and Henry’s story was sad, but they were deeply in love. They were each other’s rock, Henry knew that Clare had always been supportive of him during his travels and later in life, and Clare found comfort knowing (because Henry told her of their future) that they would always be together. 
Literate Chick 