Reasons Why I Hate The Time Traveler’s Wife Even Though I’ve Never Read It
- The main character is almost a duplicate of the author - they even share the same obscure profession, “paper artist”
- the author dyed her hair red to “say goodbye to the novel” when she finished it
- the author’s name sounds extremely close to a racial slur - saying it in public might get you punched!
- reviewers apparently found it “difficult to classify,” despite the fact that it’s obviously plain old science fiction
- reading her commentary on her own book make it sound like the greatest thing that has ever happened in literature, ever, and that just annoys me
- it promotes the pernicious fallacy that women are incapable of writing compelling science fiction or fantasy without a gooey, schmaltzy, cheesy, overwrought romance.
- it became so well-known because Scott Turow (a family friend) promoted it on national television.
More about this book’s genre:
Science fiction doesn’t mean a story that is primarily concerned with the mechanisms of time travel. The novel is obviously about the “mechanism” of time travel, as the narrative would not be able to happen without the time travel element.
I would compare it to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which most people would never actually classify as science fiction despite that being exactly what it is.
Good science fiction is about characters and, ultimately, about people. Eternal Sunshine (and possibly the Time Traveler’s Wife) is so “hard” to categorize because it succeeds in reflecting resonant and emotional truths in human relationships.
Science fiction, in the hands of good storytellers, tells us about ourselves more than it tells us about robots, vampires, wizards or aliens.
