CBR18 Book 56: "Life Out of Order" by Audrey Niffenegger

Page count: 544 pages

Rating: DNF @ 18%. 3 stars for the bits I read

This was an ARC. Thank you to NetGalley and Hanover Square Press. My opinions are entirely my own. This book is on sale now.

In recent years, legacy sequels, coming out several decades after the previous movie, have become popular. Some are surprisingly great, like Creed and Blade Runner 2049, while others make you wonder why they exist in the first place (The Devil Wears Prada 2 and Practical Magic 2: Family Legacy, to name two that I watched over the summer). Life Out of Order comes out 23 years after the mega-successful The Time Traveller's Wife and, as such, I think it's fair to compare it to a legacy sequel. Unfortunately, I can't really tell you whether it's a legacy sequel like the first examples I mentioned, or the second, since I didn't even make it a quarter of the way through the book. 

This time, we follow Alba DeTamble, Clare and Henry's daughter. Like her father, she has chrono-displacement syndrome, which means she is involuntarily thrown back (or sometimes forward) in time to any point in her own lifetime. It makes life very difficult for her, and those close to her. 

According to Goodreads, I haven’t actually read The Time Traveller's Wife since 2011, although I remember really liking it. I rated it five stars. Unfortunately, I don’t remember that much about it anymore, and I no longer remember how I reacted to the fact that the characters are often so jumbled in each other’s timelines. 2011 was long before smartphones and social media, the scourge of reading stamina and deep concentration. All I know is that when I tried to read Life Out of Order now, the fact that every chapter starts with information about the various character’s ages and what year the plot is currently taking place in, got very confusing very fast. It doesn’t help that the book is clearly set in a depressing alternate reality, where society is a lot more fascist than it currently is, and there seems to be something rather cataclysmic coming later in Alba’s life. I kept putting it down and then reluctantly picking it back up again. Sadly, I DNF-d it at 18%. It may be a perfectly good book. It just wasn’t the right one for me at this point in time. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR3 Book 98: "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger

Publisher: Vintage
Page count: 528 pages
Rating: 5 stars
Date begun: November 21st, 2011
Date finished: November 24th, 2011

Clare is 6 when she meets Henry for the first time, he is 36. Henry is 28 when he meets Clare for the first time, she is 20. Henry is a time traveller. Not in a cool Doctor Who sort of way, where he can travel where ever he wants in time and space. He keeps finding himself thrown either forward or backwards in his own lifetime, always ending up naked, and can stay in the other time for a few seconds, or several days, depending on circumstance.

Hence Clare is delighted when she finally runs into Henry at the library where he works. He's younger than she has ever seen him, she's known him and met with him countless times over the years, growing up. He gives her a list of all the dates when he will appear in the meadow behind her parents' house, so she can have clothes waiting for him in the woods. He helps her with her homework, listens to her troubles, even helps her get back at a douchy boy who hurt her, trying not to reveal to her too early (worried that he will warp her childhood irreparably) that in his present, she is his beloved wife.

The Time Traveler's Wife is obviously not a narrative with a linear plot, it jumps around a LOT. Sometimes there is more than one Henry in the story at the same time. Henry learns all the useful tricks and survival tactics he needs to get by from an older version of himself. I adore this book. I loved it the first time I read it, years and years ago, and decided to reread it to blog it for Cannonball Read. It's still great.

I don't care if the time travel plot device doesn't appeal to some readers, or that it may not consistently make sense within the narrative (a criticism I've read several places). I don't really care WHY or HOW Henry time travels, the important part is the beautiful portrayal of Henry and Clare and their heart breaking and wonderful love story. The first time I read the book, I cried buckets. This time, I managed to get by with just a sniffle, but the ending still gets me. Read the book, avoid the film adaptation like the plague. It sucks, and is just awful.

CBR2 Book19: "Her Fearful Symmetry" by Audrey Niffenegger

Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd.
Page count: 400 pages
Rating: 1 star
Date begun: January 6th, 2010
Date finished: January 9th, 2010

When Elpeth Noblin dies, she leaves her London flat and most of her possessions to her twin nieces, daughters of her twin sister Edie. Julia and Valentina inherit on their 21st birthday, on the condition that they live in the flat for at least one year, and they never let their parents set foot in it. There is obviously some bad blood between the eldest pair of twins, an event in their past caused their long estrangement. Julia and Valentina are inseparable (somewhat to the annoyance of Valentina) and while puzzled by the bequest, they decide to move to London for a year.

Once they move into the flat, located on the edge of the historic Highgate cemetery, they eventually meet Elspeth's two neighbours. In the flat above theirs lives the reclusive yet charming Martin, a crossword compiler who suffers from OCD so bad his wife has left him and moved to Amsterdam. In the flat below theirs lives Robert, Elspeth's grieving lover, a PHD-candidate who also works as a guide at the cemetery. Elspeth herself is also a significant character in the novel, who we get to know partially through flashbacks, but mostly because after her death she haunts the flat where she lived, trying to make contact with the living by making light bulbs flash and the like.

Her Fearful Symmetry is Audrey Niffenegger's second novel, the follow-up to her hugely successful debut The Time-Traveler's Wife (which I absolutely adored and included in my best of the decade list). So I obviously had some expectations. Niffenegger creates fascinating characters, richly drawn and with many layers. She very deftly describes the bond between the two sets of twins, and makes the reader understand both why one twin seems to always want to stay close to her sister, yet the other longs for freedom and independence. However, in the final third or so of the book, the story takes a direction I distinctly disliked. It is to Niffenegger's credit as a writer that I still felt compelled to finish the book, even when it took a completely unexpected turn and became something entirely different from what I had expected. I did not think it worked, but will allow others to make up their minds for themselves as to whether they think the story came to a satisfying end.