The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

I absolutely, completely loved this book. This resides alongside Kavalier and Clay as a non-genre book dealing very well with genre topics. In this case, as the title indicates, the topic is time travel. It would probably be a hard sell for any hard-core science fiction fan, as the mechanics and details of the time travel are totally glossed over. And for the purpose of the story, it doesn't really matter much. More than anything, this is a tragic love story of star-crossed lovers forced apart by circumstances beyond their control. It's about separation, longing, missing your other half. It's a theme I'm particularly vulnerable to right now, which may be part of the appeal. Despite the scmaltz-potential inherent in that theme, the lead couple is non-traditional in every way, and the author is not afraid to go dark, both of which I sincerely appreciated. I was a bit concerned when the story veered off into Baby Issues, and the story lost a lot of focus throughout that entire section. There was also waaay too much detail about the woman's (Clare's) activities as an artist. I now know way more about the steps involved in making paper than I ever wanted to (no surprise, the author is a papermaker). But unlike the baby stuff that all could be cut completely and the story wouldn't suffer. The structure takes some getting used to. The story is mostly told chronologically in the middle of their adult lives, but there are exceptions everywhere. It's unbelievably well-constructed in that sense. Vignettes appear in order to illustrate or provide context for whatever else is happening, but it never seems overly expositional. And it's remarkably easy to follow once you get the hang of it. The central issue here is that the characters are in love but out of sync and connected on different levels from one another. Even when they're together in the "present", they're not ever at the same point in their relationship with one another; in their emotional lives, one is always ahead or behind the other. She first meets him when she's six years old and he's in his 30s, and they visit regularly for a dozen years throughout her childhood and adolescence. I can see why some people would find this vaguely creepy, but I think it's handled very well and doesn't trouble me at all. He, on the other hand, meets her for the first time in adulthood, when he's 28 and she's 20. And he's been pretty fucked up his whole life by this whole involuntary time travel thing. He's dark and twisted and not very nice, and not at all like the much-older version of himself that she's known her whole life. The fact that this man, this figure who's been a powerful adult presence her whole life, is suddenly the less mature of the pair is only one of the interesting juxtapositions in the story. I've read some criticism of the male character, Henry, dominating Clare too much, intruding too much on her childhood, poisoning her chances for a normal life. What's interesting to me is not whether or not that's true, but instead how that came to pass. In Henry's timeline, he meets Clare for the first time as an adult, and doesn't start visiting her in childhood until well after making a solid connection with her grown-up self. So who is subverting whose will? In fact, the whole idea of free will versus destiny is a huge issue in the book, which leaves a lot open for pondering. In fact, this same issue leads me back to thinking about the title. I've been pondering for a while: whose story is this exactly? Is it Clare's story, or Henry's? Who is in charge? Whose story is it? I can't tell. The author seems to be telling us it's about Clare, but I'm not so sure whose journey I find more compelling. I'm glad I don't have to choose.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

I am so in love with Jane Eyre that I'm not even sure I can be rational about it. I don't know that I can begin to explain why. All I can say with certainty is that I've never loved a book more, and that I have an almost-overwhelming desire to rip it into tiny pieces and study them endlessly. I want to devour the details, to consume them and make them part of me. Yes, it does sound a lot like obsession. When I turned the last page, it was all I could do to stop myself from flipping back to the front and starting over again. If it hadn't been the middle of the night, following a 300-page sprint to the end, I just might have done so. My experience of it was similar to seeing the film "The Color Purple". No matter how many times I see that movie, I begin weeping about 10 minutes into the show, and I don't stop until after the credits roll. In this case, I was in tears on the first page (at "she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children") and hardly stopped for the next six hundred. I wept in public, on the bus and in restaurants. I wept even more in private, nearly wearing out my contact lenses with salt. I can't explain why I responded so viscerally to Jane. I wonder how many other women do the same, but I suspect it's a lot of us. Unlike many of the other classics of literature I've read, I was immediately thankful for the wealth of scholarship out there on this book, and can't wait to dig into it. I want to understand Jane, Mr. Rochester, St John, and all the others. I want to study them, to know them, to breathe them in over and over. My biggest regret is that I made it through so many years of my life without ever reading this novel. As with some of the other classic works I've (finally!) discovered in the past year, I know this one will go on the perpetual re-reading stack.

Persuasion by Jane Austen

I am so pleased to have finally discovered Jane Austen. Having tackled all of her Big Three first (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma), I moved on to the Quieter Three (Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and this one), starting with Persuasion. Having never heard it mentioned by anyone, except for it being a Jane Austen novel, it was the first of her works that I went into with no preconceived notions about the characters or actions. It was so much fun to meet each character for the first time and not know whether they were going to be hugely important or disappear forever after the next chapter. I actually hard to start over after the first couple of chapters because I hadn't paid much attention to Anne at first, failing to recognize that she was going to be the protagonist of the tale. How ironic. Anne herself is as compelling as any Austen heroine. In fact, she is a little bit dearer to me for being so ignored and ill-used by her closest family. My heart broke for her over and over as she made the wrong choices in an effort to please. Anne doesn't have a friend in the world, and it was an interesting departure from Austen's other works to have the heroine be so isolated from all companionship. I think this is much of why it was so gratifying to watch her come into herself throught the course of the novel. The story in this case is slightly less satisfying than the Big Three Austen novels, and has slightly less to do than even is typical of her works, which is a shame. Still, it's hardly worth complaining about, as I'll nevertheless be re-reading and thinking of Anne Elliot for years to come.

Emma by Jane Austen

Emma was a lot harder for me to get into than the other two Jane Austen novels I've read this year. This is probably because I know the story the best of all her works, from secondary sources. As I read, I anticipated each event prior to its arrival, and as such focused on the destination at the expense of the journey. This is so not the way to enjoy Jane Austen. At the halfway mark, I set it aside as a chore and left it there for several months. Somewhere along the way my mood lightened, and I picked up Emma again from the beginning. My experience could not have been more different on the second attempt. I'm shocked at my ability to so thoroughly enjoy each word of a book set I set aside in boredom and frustration on the first try. But I did. Rather than thinking of all the Emma's I've seen, and all the women who've tried to be Harriet Smith or all the men to inhabit Mr. Knightly in the past, I let them tell me who they are at their own pace, and in their own way, and I completely fell for the whole lot. For all her cleverness, and despite all the trouble she gets herself into with assumptions and screwball schemes, Emma shines more prettily and colorfully than all the other Austen heroines. I should hate her, but instead I find her completely irresistable. Her irrepressible, boundless enthusiasm and charm are completely refreshing, all the more because she adds just enough wisdom and reason in the end.

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

I was thrilled to find that, as with Pride & Prejudice last month, Sense & Sensibility is absolutely fantastic. Again, I boggle at having survived so long without Ms. Austen in my life. I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as the former, due I'm pretty sure to having seen Ang Lee's movie of the book so many times. Yes, the true beauty of the story is in the telling, but knowing the destination still takes some of the wind from my sails. The moments where Emma Thompson slays me in the movie are the same ones that engulfed me in the book. I wonder how much I was projecting Emma Thompson on to Elinor, and how much of what was there came straight off the page. There's no way for me to judge. Still, I was unprepared to love Elinor quite so fiercely, nor to feel such empathy for Marianne. I've always felt Marianne was ridiculous, but in the book she was much more tragic. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to encounter these two on the page first, but that's the price I pay for stubbornly avoiding one of the greatest writers ever, for no good reason at all. I have learned my lesson.

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

For many years, my secret literary shame has always been that I've never read Jane Austen. Yes, I know. I've heard women everywhere name her their favorite author, but for whatever reason I just never gave her a whirl. I can't believe I waited this long. I get so stubbornly contrary sometimes, I could just kick myself. Everyone tells me I have to do something, I resist. People close to me find things I'd love and try to share them, I avoid all contact. The more people tell me to do something, the harder I dig in my heels to avoid it. Sometimes, I'm amazed to have lived even this long. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a book so thoroughly. I laughed out loud. I cried like a big snotty goober. I couldn't stop turning the pages. I swear to you, this is an absolute treasure. I was prepared to endure this book, much as one does hated vegetables, because it would be good for me. Ha! I started here because of her Big Three, it's the only one where I was unfamiliar with the story. Unlike Sense & Sensibility and Emma, each of which I've seen multiple times in various cinematic forms, all I knew of Pride & Prejudice is what I'd picked up by casual reference. I knew from Bridget Jones's Diary that there's a Mr. Darcy who is cold and aloof but somehow swoon-worthy, and I knew from being alive that Colin Firth plays him in the BBC miniseries. I knew nothing else of the story or characters, and so everything was fresh and new to me as I read. Each chapter was more wonderful than the last. I am kicking myself for waiting this long, but I am also completely delighted to be discovering such a perfect gem at this stage of my life. I don't think it gets any better than this.