Review The Time Traveler's Wife: Istri Sang Penjelajah Waktu

The Time Traveler's Wife: Istri Sang Penjelajah Waktu

by Audrey Niffenegger (Goodreads Author), Ingrid Dwijani Nimpoeno (Translator)

Henry De Tamble memiliki "kemampuan" menjelajahi waktu. Ia bisa tiba - tiba menghilang dan muncul di tempat yang tak dikenalinya sepuluh tahun yang lalu atau yang akan datang.

Saat berpindah - pindah waktu inilah ia bertemu Clare Abshire, anak perempuan yang tinggal di Michigan, dan terjadilah kisah cinta yang indah hingga ajal memisahkan mereka.

Masalah timbul, karena saat usia Henry maju - mundur sesuai lokasinya di dalam waktu, usia Clare bertambah terus dengan normal.

Tapi Audrey Niffenegger menulis para tokoh dalam buku ini dengan cara yang begitu lembut dan halus sehingga buku ini bukan sekadar kisah cinta biasa. Berkat keahlian dan sensibilitasnyalah para pembaca akan bisa menangkap keindahan dan keanehan dalam hidup, bukan cuma gejolak - gejolaknya.

Gramedia Pustaka Utama 2007

Annisa: Kisah cinta yang romantis. Itu kesan yang saya dapet setelah membaca buku ini. Romantis tapi ngga berlebihan dan ngga geuleuh. Extraordinary love story. Stunning malah. OK lah.

Bercerita tentang sepasang manusia Claire dan Henry yang saling mencintai seumur hidup mereka. Henry adalah seorang manusia yang memiliki kelainan gen. Kalo diibaratkan seperti kaset hidup henry bisa di rewind dan forward kapan saja.

Dia bisa kembali ke masa lalu dan lompat ke masa depan. Namun Henry sendiri tidak bisa mengendalikan kapan dia melakukan time travel. Jadi semua perjalanannya melintasi waktu menciptakan jalinan kisah cinta yang unik antara Henry dan Claire.

Claire pertama kali bertemu Henry ketika umurnya 6 tahun, Henry 36. Henry pertama kali bertemu Claire ketika umurnya 25 tahun, Claire 20 tahun. Audrey Niffenegger juga membangun karakter Henry dan Claire dengan kuat dan dalam.

Henry dan Claire akhirnya menikah, membangun hidup dan keluarga. Bagaimanakah mereka bertahan dan menjalani kehidupan. Jelimet, dramatis tapi menarik, romantis dan orisinal. Sepanjang buku saya dibikin penasaran dengan apa yang akan terjadi berikutnya. Agak sedih sih endingnya, sedih tapi manis (halah). Dan saya suka buku yang endingnya macam gini. Sip lah. Recommended untuk dibaca.

Indah: Aku suka cerita-cerita tentang time travel seperti Back to the Future, di mana tokoh utamanya bisa jalan-jalan ke masa lalu atau masa depan dengan kendaraan keren dan tetap pake baju lengkap :D

Baca buku ini, di mana sang penjelajah waktu telanjang bulat setiap kali pindah waktu, membuatku teringat pada Terminator-nya Arnold Schwarzenegger yang sampai ngerampok baju preman, yang kebetulan baju kulit yang lumayan keren.

Ceritanya cukup menarik, karena tokoh utama cowoknya terus berlompatan masuk ke kehidupan tokoh utama cewek, sehingga cewek tersebut sudah tahu siapa suaminya kelak dari kecil.

Tapi lebih menarik punya anak dari cewek di masa lalu yang kemudian jadi bos kita di masa datang, deh! (Btw, ini review buku apa film Terminator?

Lynita: I have to say I'm a bit disappointed with this book; perhaps because of my high expectation having read/heard from sources that it's a great book & it's on the top of the list of "Book of 21st Century" by Goodreads.

The book to me is just a collection of diary entries of Henry & Claire...from beginning to end, from the time they met in the future & current time, to time they live together, then back to the future from Henry's point of view. The whole time, I was waiting and hoping that there will be a climax, a huge conflict, invention, tragedy, miracle, anything that neither the current Henry or the future Henry or Claire knows, that can make the story more exciting, but that is not the case. The book/story just didn't give me any emotional involvement & I sometimes wondering if I'm too numb because I'm not (that) touched by their love story. To me, it's hard to feel sorry/touched when they knew that what's gonna happen to them and they just re-living it.

The part I like about this book is the fact that they live in Chicago and I have lived in that city for a year, so the part where the writer mentions the street name, the El, the windy weather (which are quite often) reminds me of the beautiful city & my life then.

Lin-Lin: Baca ringkasan cerita singkat di cover belakang buku sebenarnya udah sangat jelas kalau cerita ini akan berakhir sedih (terjadilah kisah cinta yang indah hingga ajal memisahkan mereka)

Setelah sebelumnya cuman berkutat baca romance fairy tale dengan happily ever after ending ala Harlequin, saatnya baca cerita romance yang real dan lebih bermutu, walaupun banyak unsur science-fiction, ceritanya cukup mengharukan, terutama menjelang bab-bab akhir, tentang istri yang setia menunggu suaminya yang mempunyai gen yang membuatnya dapat menjelajah waktu tanpa bisa mengendalikannya. Satu hal yg unik disini, walaupun Henry dapat menjelajah waktu dan bahkan mengetahui masa depannya, dia tidak dapat mengubahnya.

Bacanya sih ngga sampe ketagihan tapi juga ngga membosankan, ada 2 POV,yaitu Henry dan istrinya Clare. Inti utama cerita ini tentang kesetiaan dalam penantian.

Joyzi:

Awesome book in my opinion especially that I have a thing for time traveling. I love it the story is interesting even though it's confusing at first because the story is not chronological and the author would just arrange each story by any timeline (past, future, present).

I also love the characters Henry (librarian, time traveler) and Clare (artist) and of course their daughter Alba (also time traveler). It's just sad though and I'm not expecting it that in the end the story became depressing.

I also love the part wherein Henry saw Clare writing the date in one of her work and Henry says that I saw in the future that it has no date in it, so you should not write the date. And Clare wanted to somehow break the rules of what should happen and still write the date on it and say that, "What is the big deal if I write the date or not?" Henry kind of scares her that maybe something terrible happen like a war or something if they kind of change something even if it's a small thing. So when Henry goes in the future again he looks for the drawing and was surprise that it does not have a date on it and he asks Clare since he knows that in the past they decided to put a date on it, then what the heck happen and Clare says that she was kind of scared about the war thing so when he left she decided to chipped off the date.

It just felt clever to me that somehow the past, present and future are interrelated in ways that you can't even change it, even the future. It's just whatever happens you can't change it anymore.

And also the part wherein he time travels and he went to Ingrid's apartment and when he asks Ingrid the date and he knows that this is the day wherein Ingrid killed herself and he thought that maybe he can change that, but the inevitable happens and Ingrid killed herself in front of him.

This is just a great book if you love time traveling and dejavu.

Anne: This book is a debut for Audrey Niffenegger. And being a first-timer herself, i think she made the complex timelines with ease. The Time Traveler's Wife is a love story concealed inside a suspense novel but is far from a science fiction exploration of the space-time continuum. The book is about the two characters - Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire whose passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures themselves in an impossibly romantic trap. Henry is a time-traveller; a genetic mutation which causes him to spontaneously travel through time, disappearing from view, leaving behind his clothes and possessions, and arriving naked in another time and another place. While Clare is leaving a chronologically normal life, Henry isn't. After their first meeting (Clare was 6 and Henry would be 36) Clare will always wait for his arrival. She has known him all her life. He visits her numerous times during her childhood and adolescence, and inadvertently reveals that they will be married in the future. His last visit is on her 18th birthday in 1989, and will be separated for two years. Finally, they meet in 1991, a real time for both of them, Clare is 20 and Henry is 28. Henry does not know anything about Clare and Clare has to show Henry the diary she made as a testament of Henry's existence in Clare's past, which is still in Henry's future. Henry begins to experience the events in Clare's childhood and at the same time experiencing life with the adult Clare in the present. In the novel, the future cannot be changed, and many tragic events are foreshadowed in the past.

When they soon get married, Clare and Henry have to struggle to survive and maintain their love, and at the same time fighting a complex disorder that constantly threatens their existence. They yearn for the domestic drudgery and the homely comforts of marriage without the constant fear of separation. He longs to be able to live only in the present and he and Clare desperately search for a medical treatment for the disorder but to no avail.

Although the love in the story is very much appalling and intense, a part of it I find ultimately depressing: Henry's father never recovers and continues to mourn for years when his mother died, and Ingrid (Henry's ex-girlfriend) committed suicide after losing Henry to Clare. The love in the story has such a passion with no middle ground, no growth from the experience.

But my most favorite part is the way Henry describes love through his letter to Clare. This is how it goes:

Clare, I want to tell you, again, I love you. Our love has been the thread through a labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust. Tonight I feel that my love for you has more density in this world than I do: as though I could linger on after me and surround you, keep you, hold you.