The Time Traveller's Wife

[poliphilo]

On reflection I hate this book. Two wealthy, beautiful, American, white people fall in love and get married. They are supported  in their idleness by life-affirming people of colour.  He and she claim to be punks and class warriors whilst  sucking up to her big corporate daddy, wallowing  in privilege and growing rich through what can only be described as insider trading- because- see- he's a time traveller and he's got the dope on the coming dotcom boom. Ah, but  there's the rub! Time travel isn't all fun: for one thing he never goes anywhere interesting (Wot, no ancient Romans? wot no, spacemen?)  and secondly its dangerous and embarrassing.  Sadly, he can't control it- it's a genetic aberration (yeah, right!)- and what  if he disappears in the middle of the wedding ceremony and embarrasses daddy in front of his powerful friends? The ending is tragic- long drawn out and dripping with molasses (Oh, just get on with it!)- but not to worry, because they have a perfect child and he (the traveller) isn't entirely dead because earlier versions of him keep popping up in his family's future.

I'm sure there's a film in the pipeline- probably starring a soulful Jim Carrey. There has to be.  Perhaps it already came out and flopped. 

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the review--I'll pass on it, then. I keep seeing it in the library.

I'm reading a book that's so darkly witty, and it keeps reminding me of your style. I'm laughing out loud reading it--Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother, about (loosely) a rather delicately balanced, hypochondriacal middle-aged Londoner:

Here's a quote:

"He was going to die.

"Maybe not this month. Maybge not this year. But somehow, at some time, in a manner and at a speed very much not of his choosing....

"With blinding clarity he realized that everyone was frolicking in a summer meadow surrounded by a dark and impenetrable forest, waiting for that grim day on which they were dragged into the dark beyond the trees and individually butchered.

"...Unaccountably he was now on all fours between the armchair and the television, rocking back and forth, attempting to comfort himself by making the sound of a cow."

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That sounds like fun. I believe I've heard of Haddon. I must look him up.

Right now I think I need to go back to Balzac to cleanse my palate.