Summary “The Time Traveler’s Wife”
The Time Traveler's Wife begins with a man named Henry, at age 28, working at the Newberry Library who is approached by a woman, at age 20. This woman seems to know him, even though he has never seen her before in his life.
“Henry is glancing around us, worrying that readers, co-workers are noticing us, searching his memory, realizing that some future self of his has met this radiantly happy girl standing in front of him.” p. 8
He agrees to go out with her and at dinner the woman, named Clare, says she knows everything about this man. She knows that he is a time traveler. She tells him she has known him since she was six years old. He was thirty-six when she met him. She also tells him she knows of his time traveling. She knows he always arrives stark naked because he can’t bring anything with him when he travels. She shows him a diary which contained 152 dates. All those days he would appear in the Meadow, a quiet place behind Clare’s house. He thinks it’s strange that this woman has met him 152 times and he does not even know her. She tells him different stories about things they did together but he does not know anything about it because he has not experienced it, yet. He then asks her if they can just pretend this to be a first date between two normal people. She agrees and they tell eachother things about eachother’s family.
She tells about her family living in a huge house in Michigan. She says she is a visual artist. He says his mother is an opera singer and his father a famous violinist. He loves the music his parents made but can not play instruments himself.
At the end of the date they go to Henry’s appartment and Clare wants him to make love to her. She has been waiting years for this after all. He actually wants to take his time but agrees and senses that there is something special about Clare and this new relationship. The next morning, Clare finds among other things tampons and lipstick in his bathroom cabinet. She feels kind of sick. Of course she knew in the past Henry has had girlfriends before, the Henry from the future she used to meet in the Meadow always told her he was married to Clare in the present. But they hadn’t met eachother in the present until yesterday afternoon.
“I stand there, holding the lipstick. I feel a little sick. I wonder what she looks like, what her name is. I wonder how long they've been going out. Long enough, I guess. I put the lipstick back, close the cabinet. In the mirror I see myself, white-faced, hair flying in all directions. Well, whoever you are, I'm here now. You may be Henry's past, but I'm his future.” p. 21
He tells her that the relation with that other woman is already over.
The next thing we read is about Henry’s first experience with time travel. He was five years old at the time. He went to the Field Museum of National History in Chicago for his birthday. That night he time travels back to the museum. There he meets an older version of himself, who gives him a nice tour through the museum at night. He is told he can not tell anyone about his time travels. Over the years, Henry gets taught some helpful and crucial survival tricks by his other self, such as lockpicking, breaking in, pickpocketing and fighting.
After a certain occasion his older, timetraveling version tells him he can not change things that have already happened.
“A couple years ago, I saw a little girl get hit in the head with a hockey puck at Indian Head Park. […] I found out later that she died in the hospital. And then I started to time travel back to that day, over and over, and I wanted to warn her mother, and I couldn't. […] It was like being a ghost." p. 57
One day Clare is woken because she hears someone calling her name. Henry is 43 and Clare is 13. She gets out to the Meadow and sees Henry talking to her father and brother. She knows something bad is happening but Henry waves that he’s all right so she goes back to bed.
Clare is 16 when she gets her driver’s license. Henry is 32. When he gets to the meadow she says she’s going to a party at Ruth’s, a friend of hers. He does not want to come because people might see them together but finally he agrees to go but stays in the car while she goes inside. Then Helen, one of Clare’s friends, gets out of the house to Clare’s car and thinks Henry is her boyfriend. Henry says he is just a friend of Clare’s dad and sent with her to keep her safe. Clare comes out to her car and sees Helen there. She confirms Henry’s story and they drive off. As she drives off, she turns off her headlights and races at top speed. Henry freaks out and when he asks her why she did that, she says she did it because she knew they would not die. After all, Henry told her they are married in the future, so she can not die right here. Henry says that if you are this reckless, the future is still unpredictable.
Clare then tells him about a football guy she dated who physically abused her. She wants Henry to beat him up. She even brought a gun. Henry is shocked but takes the bullets out and takes the gun with him. That night they humiliate him in the woods by taping him naked to a tree before calling every girl to come see him. The next day all the girls smile at Clare.
When Clare and Henry are lying in the Meadow on a warm afternoon she asks him what he’s scared of. He says that he is scared of losing Clare.
When Henry was six years old, his mother took him to the airport to pick up his father to celebrate Christmas together. On the way they got into an accident and his mother was impaled by iron bars. He would have been too, had he not traveled through time at that exact moment. When he returned, the police just found a six year old boy naked on the side of the road. He has traveled to that occasion numerous times and has seen his mother killed everytime. He has also traveled to a time before he was even born.
When Henry was 25 years old he was a real alcoholic. On Christmas Eve he drank so much he passed out and had to be taken to the hospital. When a friend of his asks him if he has a deathwish, he responds with “Yes.”
Gomez, Clare’s roommate’s boyfriend, warns Clare about Henry. He tells her that Henry is known for the bad way he treats women. He dumped Ingrid, who got really depressed afterwards. Two weeks later, a timetraveling Henry meets Gomez while mutilating a guy’s face in a dark alley. He supposedly called Henry a “faggot.” He tells Gomez about his disorder which sends him around in time. Gomez does not believe him until Henry vanishes in front of his face. He is stunned.
When Gomez confronts Clare about Henry she tells him:
“Don’t you see that you’re too late? You’re talking about somebody I’ve known since I was six. You’ve met him twice and you’re telling me to jump off the train. Well, I can’t. I’ve seen my future; I can’t change it, and I wouldn’t if I could.” p. 146
Henry is 28 and Clare is 20 when Clare decides to take Henry with her and introduce him to her family on Christmas. In the car he tells her what he thinks about his time travel. He thinks it’s like epilepsy because stress seems to trigger it. Also flashing lights are a trigger. It also has a physical connection, because running, sex and meditation help him stay in the present. He has no control about where he goes, when he goes and how long he goes. He just arrives somewhere and has to survive there until he gets placed back in the present. He can travel about fifty years into the future or into the past, but he mostly goes to the past, often visiting his most important occasions. Christmas goes well, even though he time travels in church, he returns really quickly, and they go back to Chicago.
Henry goes to his father’s house to ask for the rings that belonged to his mother when she was married to his dad. He first talks with Kimy, the woman who was with him his entire childhood. She tells him his dad isn’t doing very well and when Henry goes upstairs to his dad’s room he sees that he’s an absolute wreck. He finds out his alcohol addiction took away the control over his hands so he can’t play the cello anymore. This was the only thing that kept him in touch with his deceased wife. He gives in eventually and gives Henry the rings.
In preperation for the wedding Henry tries out some new drugs, made by his friend Ben, that should help him against stress. When he ends up in the hospital, Clare begs Ben to stop giving Henry drugs and he agrees.
On their wedding, Henry disappears just before they exchange vowels. Luckily, an older version of Henry is here and he marries Clare. Later that week, present Henry and Clare go to a judge and make their marriage official.
In their new home, Henry senses that Clare is a not as creative anymore. He notices she has not enough space to make art. So he buys a lottery ticket and because of his future knowledge wins eight million dollar. They can now buy a big house with a big building in the garden where Clare can make all the art she wants to make.
He then goes to his future doctor, Dr. Kendrick. To convince him about his illness he gives him a note which reads that his firstborn son will have Down syndrome. When Dr. Kendrick’s first kid is born, he calls Henry and is mad at first, because how could Henry know this. After a while he believes Henry and his disease, which, Henry tells him, he will call chrono-impairment later.
After Clare’s mother dies of cancer, she shuts everyone out of her world until she finds a poem her mother wrote about her. Now she knows that her mother really loved her, and she becomes her former self.
After six miscarriages Henry decides to get a vasectomy because he doesn’t want Clare to hurt anymore. Then a time traveling Henry, who hasn’t had a vasectomy yet, comes by and sleeps with Clare, impregnating her. This baby makes it and they call her Alba. Henry later meets this girl when he travels to the future, at age 38. She tells him he dies at age 43. This comes to him as a shock. Unlike Henry, she has a natural talent for music. He finds out that Alba does have a bit of control over her time travel and she tells him she likes it. She visits her grandmother, Henry’s mother, at concerts.
Life continues and then one day, Clare sees that her 4 year old Alba is in the garden playing with another girl. Henry tells her that she is 7 year old Alba, time traveling. Present Alba suddenly runs to the house and hugs Henry. Henry realizes future Alba must have told present Alba that Henry dies when she’s 5 years old. He makes both Alba’s promise not to tell Clare.
When Henry is 43, the year in which he would supposedly die, Dr. Kendrick tells him his immune system is broken and he won’t be able to fix his chrono-impairment. Alba might have a chance to be cured but Clare won’t give Dr. Kendrick Alba’s DNA.
Henry knows how he will die now. He will time travel to the meadow in hunting season and Clare’s brother Mark will shoot him, thinking he’s an animal. Henry will call out Clare’s name, and another version of Henry will wave calmly to Clare, while an older version of himself is dying.
Then, because of an unfortunate time travel, Henry gets brought to the ER and both his feet have to be amputated due to frostbite. This makes him really depressed, since he can’t run anymore, something he would do every single morning.
Henry and Clare have invited all their best friends to their New Years Eve party and it dawns on Henry that tonight will be his last night. He says goodbye to all his friends and Clare. After he gets shot by Mark he travels back to his living room in the present, too late to be rescued.
Clare finds a letter Henry wrote to her which read:
“Clare, I want to tell you, again, I love you. […] I hate to think of you waiting. I know that you have been waiting for me all your life, always uncertain of how long this patch of waiting would be. […] Please, Clare. when I am dead. Stop waiting and be free.” p. 503
He says that the same happened to his father and he should have moved on too. He does tell her that one day they will meet again, when she is very old.
When Clare is 82 years old, she sees Henry for the last time.
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