4 Stars.
Pros: A very unique plot/Henry is a complex character who's done some bad things to stay alive but at the same time, he tries to be a good person, surprisingly he only uses his ability to his advantage once, other than that he follows his own rules and refuses to say anything about the future.
Cons: The timeline was all but impossible to follow but if you were able to look past it, the story was a good one/Some of the characters interactions were just...off...Gomez and Clare for example, it had its reasons but it felt forced, just kind of unnecessary.
Full Review:
Clare first meets Henry when she's gone to the Meadow, a small clearing that's a ways off from her house. He's already well into his thirties and she, is only a young girl, six at the most. She's at first afraid because he's a stranger, but they eventually get to talking and for some reason, she believes his tale that he's from the future and he knows her. That they're going to meet, many times, here in this exact same place. The one thing he asks of her is if she could take clothes from her house that perhaps nobody wants anymore and leave them somewhere that he can find them, so when he inevitably comes back to this place, he won't be standing there, nude.
She does this and astonishingly enough, he does come back. Again and again, all through her childhood, adolescence and into adulthood, Henry is a constant companion, confidante and friend. And though she doesn't believe at first when he tells her, he admits that at some point, in the future, they will be married. And he's right, of course.
Those meetings during Clare's childhood are all part of Henry's past, sort of. He's constantly unstuck in time. Instead of time travel being a gift, it happens to Henry usually when he's stressed. It happens suddenly and unexpectedly and often leaves him in precarious situations, since he arrives at wherever and whenever, completely naked and with no ID and no knowledge of where or when he might be. He's learned to adapt to it, more or less, and the only people that know of his "ability" are his Father, their downstairs neighbor Kimy and his on again, off again, girlfriend, Ingrid. But when he and Clare finally do actually meet in what is Henry's present, he ends his relationship with Ingrid and falls madly in love with Clare.
It's a very confusing book to read but at the same time, it was intriguing. There were times where I was jealous of Henry's ability to see his own past, to see those he had lost, like his Mother, and there were other times where i wouldn't have wished that ability on my worst enemy. Understandably, when Henry is younger, he's chaotic. He drinks, does drugs, anything to try and stop whatever this is, that causes him to fall out of time. But when he meets Clare, everything kind of clicks into place. That's not to say that he doesn't occasionally fall out of time again, but he always comes back and he and Clare have a system, an understanding and acceptance, that he will always come back.
The ending wasn't too surprising. It was still hard to read but it wasn't surprising. I felt that Niffenegger really glossed over everything at the end and kind of fast forwarded but I understood why she did what she did. It was a confusing read, like, you can't let yourself think about it too much or you might go insane. But it was an intriguing read. And the message, to live in the moment, to experience the here and now and be grateful for every second, really hits home. I'd meant to read this book for a long time and I'm glad that I finally did.
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