I've been in a very weird zone for the last 36 hours since finishing the book.
I know I'm far from the first to be affected by the book...the word "haunting" comes to mind...and maybe it's just because I recently turned 40 and that age seems to be something of a turning point in the book, but, there's something else too.
Part of the book is taking on the problem of fate and free-will. Part of it is just a rockin' love story. My personal weirdness is with the latter. I'm down with fate/free-will.
See...I'm one of the lucky ones. I married the man I was supposed to marry--not that there weren't some great guys along the way (there were) but I wasn't supposed to marry them. I think they would agree.
So, knowing that I'm one of the few, and feeling the affects of age, and now reading this (truly wonderful book) I'm reminded quite viscerally that every time this man I love gets onto an airplane I'm pretty-well terrified until he's back home with me.
His grandmother used to admonish the family not to talk about being happy or lucky too loud for fear the evil eye would take it all away from them. It's something akin to that.
And the weird funk isn't because we're "so much like Henry and Clare"--we're not (though he does run every day, and he does dance as though he were in a mosh pit), but we're also the same ages now that they were at the end of the book, born roughly the same years (she's younger than I) and so we shared much of the same cultural markers, etc.
Anyway.
It's a great book.
Everyone should read it.
And mostly, I'd be really interested to hear how it affected you, since it really, really affected me.
4 comments:
I LOVED this book. My favorite of all time. It made me feel lucky to have found the love of my life...like the characters in the book...I can't wait for the movie...so far they've cast Eric Bana as Henry and Rachel McAdams as Clare. This book affected me in a way I can't explain. I think I finished it in 8 hours, and cried for a week. Everyone should read it! Heather, have you read The Lovely Bones, or The Glass Castle....those are great too!
I loved this book as well. It did bring up questions of what really led to Henry and Clare being perfect for each other. By Henry being a part of her childhood, she is forever changed. If she had never met Henry before her adult years, would they really have been perfect for each other?
Thanks for the rec! I've been casting about for something new with a personal endorsement. Between "Macbeth" and "The Return of the Native" and various short stories with "The Matrix" thrown into the discussion mix, I spend most of the school year in Brit Lit on this theme. I tell my dh all the time that we probably wouldn't have crossed paths, much less even liked each other had we met earlier. He was too adventurous and I was too insecure.
So wonderful, that talking about it with people who haven't read it is a bit mean; they're always left assuming that they will inevitably get disappointed. They won't, but it puts them off in that counterproductive way.
This was my favourite book that I read last year. It rivals my other two favourites pretty heavily. (I don't talk about it where they can here me much, it was such a struggle to make the 'favourite book' grade, they're kind of nervy...)
um... a little off-topic. Great book. I stop now.
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