So what makes it “Chick Lit” exactly? The fact that the book doesn’t sound interesting to you (a male) or that the entire population of your four-girl survey didn’t profess an interest in reading the book?
I guess as a question to everyone would be what would you define “Chick Lit” as being? Would you define the Time Traveler’s Wife as “Chick Lit”?
I don’t know what category I would put it in. When I think of Chick Lit I think of obvious examples such as Twilight or the corny romance novels with the half naked couples on the front. Sure, TTTW had some sweet moments but it wasn’t like he came in and swept her off her feet and they lived happily ever after.
To me, Chick Lit is a sub-genre of books. Chick Lit does not guarentee a happily ever after–happily ever afters are guarenteed in Romances (and even there I sometimes see more promises that this is a relationship worth exploring past the two week mark, rather than promises of forever).
Chick Flicks, I’m ok with being used to designate any movie aimed at women.
Well, my very-much-a-man’s-man husband read the book, after I asked him to (he generally trusts my advice on literature, after I got him into George R. R. Martin) and loved it. He said it was the most gut-wrenchingly sad thing he’s ever read, but he loved it nonetheless. There’s a lot in the book that anyone can appreciate, not just women.
The movie? Every time he sees a commercial for it on TV, he starts singing “So you had a bad day, you traveled through time…” I can see how the movie would give people the wrong impression about the book, and that’s really a travesty, because the book is excellent.
Glad you liked it. I caught it over the weekend, and enjoyed it. There are some that dismiss the book based on what I feel are unrealistic scifi expectations, when this clearly isn’t a scifi book. I really connected with the characters, and thought they were vividly presented.
The movie, of course, had to cut a lot out. Gomez (the Ron Livingston character) gets a much bigger role in the book - but his cuts were understandable. The one thing that I think did suffer was the passage of time. Yeah, Henry dies in his late 40s, but the book makes that out to be a fairly old age - and you can see the difference between 45 year old Henry and 25 year old Henry. I would have liked to see them make that distinction better.
Enjoy the book - there’s a lot more to discover in there.
Sure it is. I think there’s an unfortunate tendency to dismiss good character-driven science fiction as not being sci-fi, and reserve the label for space opera, when the genre is much larger than that.
I’m another guy who loved this book. And my father and the three of my male friends I’ve convinced to read it have also enjoyed it.
Some friends who saw it told me there’s a scene in which Rachel McAdams shows her back, and apparently she’s skeletal thin. They said the audience was noticeably uncomfortable during the scene. Did anyone else notice this?
Yeah, to chime in with Lightray, Satan (right?), Munch, and iamthewalrus: I’m a guy, I like guy things, and this book is fantastic. And I agree with walrus: it is scifi…or, at least, it straddles that line between scifi and “the real world with a single element of the fantastic” that many great books have done so well.
dropzone, I think you and your Women’s Lit friends are really selling the novel short.
Another guy chiming in with my perspective. I very much liked the book, and will probably see the movie eventually on DVD.
On the other hand, my wife and her friends like Twilight and made me read it. I did not care for it at all. Now I’m trying to convince my wife to read Time Traveler’s Wife and she keeps putting it off!
I loved the book, although I found it heartwrenchly sad and it stayed with me for a long time. I just saw the movie last night and it felt a bit flat to me - I felt like little of the sense of fate, the inevitability of it all, translated well. Especially the ending - because Henry didn’t lose his feet and could clearly actually walk, he seemed more confused than actually unable to get away in the hunting scene. It wasn’t really clear (to me) that the hunt happened at a time when Claire was young, and the hunters never actually saw Henry at all. The friend I was with hadn’t read the book and didn’t realize that the hunter was meant to be Claire’s Dad, thus rendering the scene much less potent.
Part of what was fascinating to me about the book was how people slowly figured out Henry’s deal - Claire’s family vaguely recognized him from various events during her childhood, and sort of slowly put everything together. In the movie it was like 'Hey, I’m Henry, and I can travel through time!". It seemed like everyone just knew.
Overall the most annoying thing to me was that I really didn’t find either Claire or Henry remotely likeable. Looking back, they weren’t really likeable in the book either, but I guess I didn’t feel like they were meant to be, and I was more forgiving because the complex emotions behind their actions were clearer.
Anyways, the movie was okay, but not great in my opinion. Probably if I had not read the book first I would have liked the movie better.
Thanks for the helpful review of the movie, Meyer. I’m kind of surprised that they didn’t handicap him like in the book, since that seemed like it played a key role in his death to me at least.
