The Time Traveler's Wife, a novel I said I would never, ever read. When it came out in 2003 the plot sounded insane, and it still did last week when two of my students wrote book reviews about it. I should note that the book reviews were actually quite good for such a complicated, insane plot.
So why is it that I am now on page 398 of this whopping 536-page novel? I can't seem to answer this. One of my students did hand me a copy of the book last week insisting that I read it. As I shook my head, I opened up the cover and a Derek Walcott poem stared back at me. Derek Walcott? An auspicious beginning for such a terribly titled book. Here is the poem, which I ran into again in the library later that same day. Funny coincidence.
"Love After Love"
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
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