Book Review: The Time Traveller’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

The genre of the book is debatable. On one level it is simply a love story, and one could easily be forgiven for filing it away under ‘fiction’. That said, the paradoxical nature of the romantic relationship, which is central to the plot, leaves a question as to whether it should actually be viewed as a work of science fiction. It does not quite fit comfortably into this category either, since the time travel which takes place in the book does not develop as a result of technology or technological advancement, but is rather a speculative matter of biology.

Henry DeTamble has a genetic condition which sends him hurtling back and forth through time. He has no control over when he shifts and no true control over where and when he goes – although it becomes clear that he usually ends up in proximity to the most important people in his life, including himself.

The novel has a slight edge of fantasy to it as a result, however at its core, it is an exploration of relationships and human nature, with a sidebar in existentialism. On a basic level, it is a tale of love conquering all, yet on a deeper level it explores the impossible nature of love and the contradictory and inherently selfish nature of humanity. Time travel is not the point of the novel, it is the mechanism used to convey the deeper meaning and themes of the novel, and it is very beautifully done.

This book is, in one sense, mind boggling. The entire plot revolves around the fact that, at the age of thirty-six, Henry meets six year old Clare Abshire. In his present, he is married to Clare (by then an adult), and after several meetings with child-Claire eventually tells her that he is the man she will marry when she is older – he knows this, because for him it has already happened. Years later, when Clare is an adult, she runs into the Henry of her present, who at that point has never met her, and tells him all about their numerous encounters. For Henry, these incidents have yet to happen, but for Clare they are an intricate part of her childhood and her entire identity. It’s a classic predestination paradox: Clare would not have been able to tell Henry they were going to get married unless they had already got married, as she wouldn’t have known without Henry telling her. Yet it seems highly doubtful that they ever would have ended up together had Clare not essentially introduced herself as his future wife, and so a question hangs over the entire plot: did Clare and Henry fall in love with each other because they fell in love, or did they fall in love with each other because each had been told by the other that they were – in another time – already in love and married.

For those who enjoy quantum physics, it’s a fun plot, if rather predictable. For those who enjoy a good romance, it’s a good read if, again, a little predictable. The joy of the novel however comes in the eloquence of the writing and the depth of the characters – even minor characters shine in a manner that is unexpected in most novels. The point of view is also compelling. First person narrative has many huge benefits yet it often suffers from a lack of additional perspectives. Not so in this novel, for the point of view alternates between Henry and Clare, yet is always first person. As a result, you come to know both characters extremely well. It takes a great deal of skill to accomplish a believable, multiple point of view, first person narration, as the author must keep the voice for each separate character utterly consistent and completely distinct. Characters do not often come through with enough clarity for the shifts in point of view to be distinguishable, and you are left with the impression that the different characters are all very ‘samey’. That is not the case here, for while there is some initial confusion getting used to skipping back and forth between Henry and Clare – both in terms of point of view and past and presents – once you settle into it, you are left with two beautifully drawn characters who immerse you in their lives, and the deep-seated nature of their love for each other. It is almost as if, by being told that are the loves of each other’s lives, all uncertainty has been removed and they are left to simply love each other in a way that most people could never experience. They have no boundaries, no limits, and no uncertainties. At the same time, one feels that they are severely limited by this knowledge, for Clare never fully explores her life without Henry, as he is the centre of it from the time she is six years old. She spends her whole life waiting to meet him, and once she does she spends her whole life with him, and caught in limbo when he is torn away to other times. Henry on the other hand, skips through life with odd snippets of knowledge of a future he knows will happen, but is often uncertain of when.

The only downfall of the book is the predictability of the plot, for throughout you are longing for them to thwart the inevitable future. You are rooting for Henry to grow a pair and try to change the future he has seen, yet he never does – he know his own fate, and accepts it, despite the pain he knows it will cause those he loves most. It seems it never even occurs to him to try to change or avoid it; like Clare, he spends his life awaiting the moments he is certain will come and, as a result, fails to fully experience the present.

The predictability of the plot, and the lack of twists and turns, is at once a disappointment in an otherwise wonderful read, and the core of the novel itself, which explores concepts of free will and fate. Despite their abiding love for each other, both Henry and Clare suffer greatly as a result of their unconventional romance, and the over-riding question is whether they ever had any choice in the matter, or if the course of their lives (and everyone else’s) is predetermined.

Do any of us truly choose who we fall in love with?

Tweeting Astronaut Chris Hadfield To Retire

Commander Chris Hadfield – the Canadian astronaut who shot to fame with his tweets from space – is to retire from the Canadian Space Agency.

Making unique use of social media to report on his work and to send amazing pictures of Earth from the perspective of space, 53-year-old  Hadfield managed to capture and captivate the world’s attention, and also to reignite people’s interest in space exploration.

However, it was on his last “day” in space, when he sang a rendition of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, when the song went viral and he became something of a superstar of space exploration. Since returning to Earth, Hadfield has remained very much on top of his game, continuing to tweet and post about matters relating to the planet, and its “role” within the greater context of space.

Hadfield announced his retirement at a press conference outside Montreal yesterday after having received a visit from Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and will return to live in Canada shortly. Speaking of his space venture, Hadfield said that “it has been an incredible adventure”, and commented on his ISS project, which saw him achieve international fame, as being “a kind of pinnacle of my entire career… since I was a little dreaming kid of nine years old thinking of flying into space.”

Indeed it is true that Hadfield’s ambition has seen him become the first at many endeavours, including being the first Canadian to spacewalk, and the first Canadian to visit the Russian Space Station MIR in 1995.

Of course, more recently, Hadfield has become both the first man to tweet from space – thereby proving that it can actually be done – and the first man to film a music video in space (albeit a relatively low budget one).

Now that he has become, essentially, a multi-record breaker in space exploration, Hadfield has certainly earned a break from his hard work, promising his wife that they would move back to Canada one day when his space work was complete.

However, as he has declared plans to continue giving presentations and promoting space exploration, it is apparent that this is not the last we will be hearing from Hadfield, and he will continue to be a prominent figure in the space industry.

Book Review: Wither, Lauren DeStefano

A cold, dark box, filled with terrified teenage girls is the rather dramatic opening to Lauren DeStefano’s debut. Of those girls, all but three are shot and killed. The survivors are taken as ‘Sister Wives’ for Linden Ashby, the son of a very wealthy ‘First Generation’ scientist who has dedicated his life to finding a cure for a mysterious plague. The virus is killing all girls born in the last fifty years at the age of twenty, and all boys at twenty-five, a side effect of the creation of the ‘First Generation’ – genetically faultless humans, free from all disease, who live extended lives in perfect health. In a world where everyone but the very old now die very young, Gatherers roam the streets snatching young girls to be taken as wives for the wealthy, used to produce children and, in the case of those taken by Vaughn Ashby for his son, experimented on for the sake of finding a cure.

Central character Rhine Ellery is one of these three wives, arriving at the Ashby estate in Florida just as Linden’s first wife and childhood love is dying of the virus. Accompanied by older wife Jenna, and the painfully young Cecily, Rhine must endure being married to Linden and everything that comes with it. But while Cecily embraces her new life, and Jenna cuts herself off from all emotional response to it, so that she might enjoy the last year of her life in comfort, Rhine is determined to escape, and return to her twin brother in New York.

As the novel unfolds the extent of Vaughn’s disgusting actions are revealed, and Rhine forms a close friendship with Gabriel, one of the servants. Her resolve to escape never wavers, however she does find herself enjoying the comforts of her new life, and truly feels she is a ‘sister’ to both Jenna and Cecily, and is also drawn to Linden in a way she cannot explain. Ultimately she must struggle through her feelings and decide who she is: the girl her brother always knew as his twin, or the woman Linden sees as his wife, sister to Jenna and Cecily.

The first of The Chemical Garden Trilogy, Wither introduces a type of world rapidly gaining recognition thanks to the success of The Hunger Games: post-apocalyptic, dystopian earth in the near future. Wither is also a Young Adult novel, an odd juxtaposition for post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction, which either works splendidly or fails miserably. Unlike classic titles in this genre, such as the numerous works of Margaret Atwood, and Mary Shelley’s seminal The Last Man, Young Adult post-apocalyptic fiction is often hindered by the limitations of the genre. The Hunger Games managed to spectacularly avoid such pitfalls. Wither, on the other hand, did not.

Due to the age of the readership for YA fiction, both plot and characterisation are often curbed by the perceived need to make the work suitable for a younger audience. The plots are often simplified, due to YA books being generally shorter in length, and the view that young readers are either uninterested in, or incapable of following, more complex plots. The result is novels often have the basis of a reasonable plotline, but it is never fully explored, never truly explained, and the reader is left with a lot of questions and the feeling they have been robbed of something.

This is the case with Wither, for while there is some potential in the general plot, the lack of salient details make it borderline ridiculous. From the simple perspective of mathematics, it makes no sense: we are told the First Generation was born seventy years ago, yet for fifty years people have been dying of this illness. Since it is not possible for the First Generation to have children old enough to die at the age of twenty or twenty-five, when they themselves are only twenty, this very early statement completely undermines the entire premise. Being forced to second guess the narrator’s statements and figure out how the entire situation could possibly work is a severe distraction from the very first pages of the book. Add to this a virus which targets people at a specific age, and a different age, depending on gender, and the plot becomes even more unbelievable.

The final nail in the plot’s coffin is that North America is supposedly the only surviving land on the planet. Every other country has been obliterated by war; land masses have broken up into such small pieces they are uninhabitable. The reader is expected not only to believe this, but to believe America remained unscathed, and there aren’t any other humans on the whole planet, or any humans who were not a part of this test-tube-born first generation and whose children live perfectly normal lives. While there is the occasional hint that this might be explored in future books in the trilogy, for the sake of Wither, that so many people would simply accept as fact something so utterly implausible it is just one more unbelievable point.

Fortunately, what is lacking in plot is more than made up for in characterisation. In this regard, Wither exceeds itself, providing full, well rounded and completely believable characters. Rhine, as a first person narrator, never fails to deliver. While there are few other characters in the novel, those that do appear are always solid, no matter how briefly they appear. The only oddity in characterisation is that DeStefano holds back in some respects with Rhine. In particular her sexuality and the physical aspects of her relationships with both Linden and Gabriel are censored; too censored for a sixteen year old girl full of hormones, in a situation where she would be in desperate need of comfort. This is particularly odd, because such is not the case with either Jenna or Cecily, in particular Cecily, who is only thirteen years old.

It is all too common for YA novels to avoid sexually explicit scenes out of the need to keep it clean, however this vastly underestimates the reality of teenage life in modern society: whether we like it or not, teenagers have sex. Presenting characters that don’t, even when their situations, emotions,  and wishes, make it far more likely they would, smacks of a need to preach. This is seen in the dynamics of the central relationships in the ever-popular Twilight series, and A Discovery of Witches, despite the fact the latter involves a woman aged thirty-three. While it is understandable to shy away from including sexual elements in fiction geared towards young adults, there must surely be a more believable way of handling these issues, especially in a book such as Wither, where young girls are taken as wives and forced to conceive, prostitution is openly discussed, and a thirteen year old girl is coupled with a twenty year old man who has three other ‘wives’.

Despite the pitfalls of the plot and the incongruities in the manner in which more adult components are handled, Wither is most certainly worth the read, if only for DeStefano’s beautiful prose and compelling characters. There are times in the novel where you truly forget that the plot is ridiculous, and the reactions of Rhine and Linden make no real sense, because of the manner in which the tale is told. This is a book which makes you glad teenagers are reading it, because the calibre of the writing is so much better than that usually found in the YA market you feel as if young readers will come away from it with a heightened awareness of how literature should be written. It remains to be seen how the rest of the trilogy will unfold; hopefully the issues in the plot are addressed further in, and Rhine grows as a character, becoming a more convincing teen. One thing is for sure, if the next two books are written as well as this one, I’ll be reading them regardless.

Film Review: Heimat

A friend recently asked me if I’d seen the classic German TV series Heimat. After replying with a somewhat dimwitted – “Huh? What?”, I had to admit to not even having heard of it. But when he added that it’s regarded very highly by film fans and critics alike and often reaches high places in numerous lists of The Greatest….etc etc, I was intrigued enough to seek it out.

Heimat (a German word that means Homeland) is actually a series of 32 films or rather episodes written and directed by Edgar Reitz. They depict life in Germany between the years of 1919 and 2000 as seen through the eyes of the Simon family from the Hunsrück region of the Rhineland and although the overall length of the 32 films is 53 and a half hours, making it one of the longest series of feature-length films in cinema history, for this review, I’m dealing with the first season only, which spans the years 1919 to 1982.

The first season of Heimat was originally broadcast in 1984 and consists of 11 episodes, centring on the character of Maria Simon (Marita Breuer), and her life in the small fictional village of Schabbach. We follow her from being a carefree teenager to a wizened, mentally scarred old matriarch and all the ups and downs that life throws at her along the way. At the beginning, it depicts a simple peasant life within a close-knit community where two and three generations often live under one roof and where everyone knows everyone else’s business. The village is filled with colourful characters, some loveable, some not, and we get to join them on their journey through the years as they deal with everything from domestic and personal issues to wider social and political events.

English subtitles notwithstanding, I found it very easy to immerse myself in the affairs of these people as they deal with love, loss, illness, gossip as well as the national matters that were occurring in Germany at the time. The scope of the filming never really strays far from the village and surrounding towns so the effects that these national upheavals have on the members of the community are depicted in very personal ways. I found it quite extraordinary to see the village itself slowly transform over the years as horses and carts give way to motorcycles and automobiles and as the coming of the telephone and the building of a highway change the local landscape. The costume department did a great job too, no mean feat when you’re talking about seven decades and numerous fashion styles.

The plot is far too comprehensive to go into here but as part kitchen-sink drama and part social/political commentary, it shows in wonderful detail how times changed for the people of this tiny rural community and as positive as progress is, one can’t help but feel a little rueful at the passing of certain things. “Once, we all lived under the same roof. Now we are spread around the world,” says a family member, aptly summing up the changes. Of course, spanning so many years, characters come and go, some die through old age, sickness or war and new characters are born who become fascinating to us a little further down the line. For the most part, the make-up to age the actors is terrific as is the acting. The look of the film is beautiful too with sweeping panoramas of the countryside and nicely lit interiors and the frequent switching between colour and black and white to heighten emotional conveyance adds to the overall ambience of the time.

A filmmaker from his early twenties, the director, Edgar Reitz was born in Morbach, Hunsrück in 1932 and so he knew the region and the people well. This is likely why there’s such a feeling of honesty about Heimat. If this wonderful piece of art is unknown to you as it was me, do yourself a favour and take the time to give it a look. It’s richly rewarding and definitely worth it.

‘Scarless’ surgery? Check out NOTES

Surgery is a daunting prospect. The thought of another human-being rummaging around in your insides is enough to turn anybody a bit pale with worry. Oh- and as an added bonus- the chances are, you are going to be left with a lovely scar to commemorate the event.

Well actually, that may not necessarily be true…

Pushing the boundaries of existing minimally-invasive technologies, surgeons are currently attempting the amazing feat of being able to complete certain procedures without the need for incisions. Via, shall we say, naturally existing access routes within the body.

Yes: it is what you are thinking.

The rectum, vagina, urethra and also the mouth are all channels utilized in NOTES (Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery) in order for doctors to gain access to internal areas needing to be operated on.

The basic principle of NOTES has been an established means for diagnostic tests and simple therapies for a while- for example, inserting a camera into the throat to better view of internal structures (known as endoscopy). Now however, this technology is being explored in an exciting new capacity.

The potential to be able to complete full surgical procedures through already-present orifices in the body, means that new openings do not have to be created and therefore surgeons can try to avoid putting patients through the physical trauma of being cut open. Instruments, including a camera, can be inserted into these sites, allowing for surgeries to be performed in an incredibly minimally invasive way.

When compared with conventional laparotomy (standard open surgery, requiring a substantial incision into the abdomen) and laparoscopy (minimally invasive surgery, which uses small incisions into the abdomen, followed by the insertion of instruments into the body via ports), NOTES comes with a range of potential benefits.

The major advantages can mostly be attributed to the lack of an external wound site. This key achievement of NOTES means that the patient does not have to suffer the additional pain of wound-healing; does not have the risk of developing an incisional hernia and crucially; has reduced risk of surgical site infection.

Post-operative infection is one of the most common complications of surgery and can be deadly; by taking away an external healing site it severely reduces the chances of germs getting to the surgical site and creating a nasty infection.

Added to this, there could also be a reduced requirement for anaesthesia and shorter hospital stays too. But inherently unique to this surgery, is that it is ‘scarless’. This is even to the extent that on occasions when another camera is needed to be inserted from the outside, a very small incision is made into the belly button, in such a location whereby the cut will be hidden within folds of the skin.

Research and training are currently in progress to help propel NOTES to its full potential. With this technology already proving its feasibility in human trials, mainly in the field of general surgery- from removal of the appendix to biopsies to the treatment of intestinal cancers- it may not be too long before this technique establishes itself as a significant evolutionary step in modern surgical methods.

Photo credit: TopNews.in

Is Fido a communist? Thoughts on Andrew Currie’s unlikely hero in suburban America.

Irony with zombies
‘Fido’ is not strictly a zombie movie. Yes, its main premise is the story of a domesticated zombie, played by a strictly-grunting Billy Connoly, in a 1950s ‘perfect America’ universe where zombies are the ‘pets’ of mankind. The trick is to simply lock a collar around their necks to surpress their need to eat and create fenced off communities that protect them from the ‘Wild Zone’ where all the remaining un-domesticated zombies live. These communities are perfect in every way (it never rains apparently) and the families living in them look like they came right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. The working 9-5 husband Bill (Dylan Baker), the stay-at-home wife and mother Helen (Carrie-Ann Moss) and the well-mannered skinny kid Timmy (Kesun Loder). Only in this movie, instead of a dog, the pet is a zombie called Fido who starts to wake up from his permanent state of apathy and develops a will of his own despite the collar’s technology. As parts of his humanity emerge, seen through his cravings for a cigarette and appreciation of a woman’s scent, he protects and cares for Timmy and his family, as the ugliness of this seemingly-perfect American community appears. Through an accidental malfunction of his collar, Fido attacks Ms. Henderson, the generic old lady that spies on her neighbours, and before we know it there is a containment problem as zombies spread and death multiply. The head of ZomCom security, Mr. Bottoms, a decorated veteran of the Zombie Wars, succeeds in stopping the contamination just in time but many people are dead and he needs to make an example out of Fido and little Timmy.
The charm of this movie is not just its vibrant palette of colours, its shiny settings or the classic 50s images, like the wife greeting her husband at the door with a three-olive martini while the ham is in the oven. The images of this blissful suburban life are now romantic flashbacks, back to a time where family values were at the core of the American Dream and husbands, mothers and children had specific roles to play, a far cry from some family images we see in the movies today (absentee fathers, drunk mothers, rebellious sons and daughters). There is almost a longing to see a James Dean look-a-like appear at a some point to shake that blinding white smile off everyone’s face and make them act human, because they are as ‘zombified’ as their pets. This is what this film is all about though. It is the zombie that teaches Timmy to stand up to his bullies, it is the zombie that ignites the spark of feminism in Helen, it is the zombie that makes Bill want to be a better father to his son and it is the zombie that transforms this generic, dull community into a lively and human mix of people that have to face their inner demons. Irony at its best and the definitive charm of this film.

Zombies spread the life
When Mr. Bottoms, the illustrious war hero, declares that there is a containment problem within his perfect community, it is as if the film screams at you ‘Sound familiar?’. A decorated Zombie War veteran, risen to politics, protecting a town from a dangerous pandemic that kills people and turns them into heartless, emotionless eating machines? A pandemic whose source, Fido, seems to make women stand up to their husbands (‘Get it yourself dear’ ) and children rebel against their parents wishes. This film brings back memories of old Cold-War science fiction films like ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’, ‘The Thing from Another World’ and ‘It Came From Outer Space’ where such contamination scenarios do occur but their consequences are different. Instead of breathing life into a community, the threat tries to destroy all humanity it finds and replace it with pale copies of people, devoid of all emotion and free will. But this was 60 years ago, since then the Cold War has ended and the threat does not come from space but from the all-American home, from the people in power. They talk of perfection, control and safety, attainable only through the use of a gun and isolation.
Fido does not talk, does not actually control anything but through an accidental ‘dinner’, he sets off a sequence of events that show the rotten state of the American family core. However it is not beyond salvation. The solution? Human contact, conversation, sentiment and understanding, something that the status quo forbids in order to contain the zombie virus. In this world, if your mother turns into a zombie, well then she is easy to kill if you don’t love her. If your neighbour tries to eat you, you forget that he gave you 10 extra dollars for mowing his lawn and you chop off his head. Easy, simple and emotionally detached. Mr. Bottoms is a fervent believer in this ethos and is the representation of how America should live in this post-Zombie War world, looking more and more like communist-hunter Joe McCarthy who imprisoned and persecuted any citizen deemed to challenge American values and show left-wing sympathies in the 1950s. Timmy and Fido are challenging the status quo and draw in more people in their movement, until finally the whole town is contaminated. But this illness does not bring the community to an end, in fact it makes the viewer connect with the characters, love them, admire them and cheer for them, because they found their true voice and a lifestyle that makes them truly happy instead of acting like actors in a 50s toothpaste commercial. Helping Fido and Timmy in their quest is Mr. Theopolis (played by the brilliant Tim Blake Nelson), the only human adult in the film that sees through this technicolor sham and does not quite fit in. The cares for his zombie, Tammy, despite her nature and keeps her beside him as a partner, not just a servant. Their relationship is frowned upon by the rest of the town, showing that every community has their black sheep. However Theopolis and Tammy are the perfect example of what the community should in fact aspire to be.

Lenin, Guevara, Trotski and Fido
Communism in American cinema, as with its current politics, will never belong on the good side of popular culture. The so-called ‘Third World War’ between America and Soviet Russia lasted from the end of the Second World War, till the collapse of the Soviet block in 1989 under Republican hero Ronald ‘Second coming of Christ’ Reagan. But unofficially, Hollywood never liked ‘lefties’ and probably never will. They will always be portrayed as either eccentric, remnants of the losing side, or just mad but Fido seems to be neither. The similarities between this film and the ones mentioned above is undeniable but the formula is reversed. As the bodysnatchers suck the life out of Americans, Fido retrieves it for them even though he is undead. Is Hollywood changing its mind about Communism? Wishful thinking there I’m afraid since this battle will go on in cinema and American politics for as long as uneducated right-wingers scream on Fox News that healthcare is socialism. No, this is not about communism in the end. It’s about family, it’s about loving your neighbour and it’s about breaking the wall of silence that our society today lives in.
The people in the town are seemingly fenced off from the rest of world, they hardly talk to each other unless it is to improve their social standing, the kids learn how to shoot to kill without a second thought (a nice critique on gun-laws there) and the best accomplishment one could hope for when they die, is to have their heads cut off and to be buried in the cold ground and stay there. All fitting metaphors of the crippling isolation modern society is going through. Emotional detachment, lack of empathy and individualism are all stigmas in today’s world, mostly due to technology, fear, lack of trust and digital networking. All these hinder human contact and increase the chance of living a solitary life while being constantly surrounded by people. In this film, Fido is our saviour. He will accompany you outside to play in the park, he will help you wash you dad’s car in the driveway while you mum makes lemonade, he will help you get the girl, he will save you from bullies, he will want you to be a decent human being to your family and friends. Fido has all the traits of a Hollywood 1950s communist but in fact he is not a revolutionary, he is not a messiah.
He is what we used to be, imperfect in a lot of ways but alive, smoking, drinking, running and biting.