Welcome to the Stuff Book Club day, where the spotlight is on YOU. You're invited to post reviews of our book of the week in the comments section. I want to know your opinions and what you think makes a book great - or not.
"Don't you think it's better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?" 
In my post about literary crushes, quite a few people mentioned afterwards that Henry from The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger, is their perfect man.
While Henry does have many great points - intelligence, sexiness, creativity, devotion to one woman for life (crucial requirement for all romantic heroes) - I hated that Clare spent her entire life waiting for him and, consciously or not, he encouraged this.
Don't get me wrong, I adore this novel. It has all the ingredients of a really good read: thoughtful writing, something new to say about life, drama, tension, enough ambiguity to keep the reader guessing.
I also like how it plays around with the concept of destiny and fate vs free will. How much of Henry and Clare's love story is serendipity, and how much of it lay in the choices they made? It seems to me that the entire thing, from their first meeting in the library down to the final scene, was orchestrated by Henry - whose chrono-displacement (time travelling) disorder gives him the unfair advantage of knowing the future.
You could also argue that Clare was not passive at all. She did make strong decisions. But it's an infinitely inferior "choice" to be the one left waiting, and it is also debatable if she had any real choice but to become Henry's wife. Her idea of a dream man was shaped by the meetings she had with him from the time she was a child.
Despite all of this, The Time Traveler's Wife remains one of my favourite love stories. The scene in the library is the kind of meet-cute many bookworms dream of, exchanging numbers in between Shakespeare and Voltaire.
Going back to the original question at the beginning of this post, I think the answer depends on if you're a romantic, a realist or a fatalist.
So dear reader, which one are you?
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Trying to discuss choice in a book about time travel - especially one which goes back and forth as often as this one is the ultimate exercise in futility! Getting back to question, I do believe it's better to experience total joy for awhile, even if it doesn't last forever, is a wonderful thing. Which is probably why I loved the book so much, even if it does have it's unbelievably sad moments.
I think that is unfair, he tried repeatedly to stop his mother dying in the car accident which he was never able to do. His inability to do that has a flow-on effect to the rest of his life. When he saw the damage he was causing to Clare with the continuous miscarriages, he did the only thing he could do stop that - and therefore change the situation.
Love that book. Every time I reread, I start crying from the beginning, knowing how it's all going to end. I'm a bit of a sci fi geek so loved the premise of the time travel and how it created so many issues for Henry. I think Clare was strong enough to walk away but also knew that this was her happiness - the old destiny thing.
Loved the book too. By the way who won the 50 shades of Grey competition?
I haven't read but I watched the movie. One of those "oh I must"...never get around to it moments.
What your take on movie adaptions. Do you read the book first? Watch the movie first? Don't mix at all? I prefer to read first. Develop the charaters in my head first and hope actors/actresses live up to pre created standards.
I saw The Notebook before I read it. Still bawled my eyes out with my head buried in the pages. There is just something about that story...
Oh my. If I'd kept up weekly and read your articles in order, I wouldn't have bothered with that questions haha.
I've read this one several times now, and while I do enjoy the romance, writing and story arc, the fact that Clare does appear to just wait and wait and wait for Henry to make that one last visit is just so unbearably sad, and does make her more of a watcher than a participant in her own life. Its definitely a book that takes at least two readings before you really get all the naunced detail (like the death scene vs the earlier recollection of it and Henrys first introduction to the family).
I loved this book when I read it, but felt strongly that Claire shouldn't be waiting around for a guy to come back into her life, and the fact that he expected her to continue things as normal but stop everything when he was around is just typical of men. I also own the movie, which I think did not do justice to this book.
I'm not a fan - I don't think the writing's fantastic, Henry - aside from his time-travelling abilities is somewhat of a stock-character. I think a lot of the minor characters are more interesting than Henry and Claire whose personalities have very obviously been stolen from a Nicholas Sparks novel - It's a somewhat trite lovestory masquerading as more than it is with a time-travel mask
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I always thought Henry was kind of weak. He never even TRIED to change his situation. I also hated the ending. All that aside there's a long gap between Henry's "death" and Clare's old age so I liked to think that she lived a normal life without him, and didn't just pine away, otherwise that would make the book TRULY depressing.