Another Richard and Judy book. Bought it because we are looking at it in my Reading Group.

The picture shows a painting by Arthur Hacker "Vale and Farewell". I was looking for a good image of Odysseus and Penelope, the mythic archetypes of the wandering husband/faithful wife, referred to at the novel's protracted but moving conclusion. But this will do nicely.

I really didn't want to read this book, maybe because everyone raved about it so much, but it was chosen as the first title by the reading group I've just set up myself, so it went into the holiday suitcase. It took a while to get into, because the structure is so complex - Henry, the main character, is afflicted with a genetic disorder which makes him jump about involuntarily in time, meaning that his wife-to-be meets him when she's six and he's almost forty, but he doesn't meet her until she's twenty and he's twenty-eight. Even with a note before each scene telling you where (or rather when) we are, that makes huge demands on both writer and reader - and in addition, Henry's able to jump into his future as well as his past, and regularly meets another "self". Wow! I certainly had to admire the technical skill Niffenegger has to bring it off.

And gradually, it drew me in. Probably because, once you accept the basic concept, everything else about the book is very firmly rooted in everyday life, and that's exactly what gives it such poignancy. Because that's exactly what Henry, and his soulmate Clare, long for more than anything, and can never have. Life for them both is a constant struggle to keep Henry fixed in the present moment, because when he slips away he has no control over events and lands, naked and vulnerable, in all kinds of threatening situations. Many of the pleasures of modern life are denied to him - TV, airline travel, stability, relationships with more than a handful of people, and he struggles to hold down a job and start a family. Worst of all, he knows things about the future which are a huge burden to him, including the date and the way that he's going to die.

Through it all, Clare is his fixed point, his only stability, loving him without qualification through all his inexplicable comings and goings. It's hard to write about the happiness of a lifelong relationship at its best. Maybe this is the only way to do it - by putting your characters into a situation so extraordinary that daily life is uniquely precious to them. They're both very fully realised, convincing characters, and the whole story is rooted in the daily life of a particular place (Chicago) to an unusual degree. Years of creative writing teaching have taught Niffenegger everything she needs to know about locating each scene very clearly in a real context. Eventually, the outrageousness of the original concept ceases to matter, and the reader is drawn into the simple reality of these two people's remarkable love for one another. The themes explored are universal - how people change through time, how memories define our identity, how the various arts of music, painting and poetry may be used to attempt to fix a particular human moment in eternity (or at least for a lifetime or two) and what it is like to live with a dearly loved partner in the grip of forces that they cannot control.

Yes, I cried - a lot. Lay awake far into the night turning it over in my head - and next morning started to read it all over again.

(Images shown are from the Home Page of the Newberry Library, Chicago)