She said they had been in touch for years, after someone pointed out that a Moffat-penned episode of Doctor Who called “The Girl in the Fireplace” played like an homage to The Time Traveler’s Wife. Niffenegger credits writer/director Moffat with capturing the spirit of her book despite taking a few liberties with the adaptation. I would just note that the complicated and messy lives of the characters are not necessarily endorsed by the author.” People seem to want to jump up and down on this new version with cleats. “In earlier days, I got a lot of blowback from feminists who objected to the title defining Clare in relationship to her husband Henry,” she said. Niffenegger believes mismatched expectations and sensibilities might be why so much of the reaction is tinged with notes of indignation. A child of the early 2000s would have been more watched over.” “People seem to want to jump up and down on this version with cleats” Steven has brought the whole timeline forward by 20 years. “People are very focused on child abuse these days what was seen as no big deal in the 1980s is now seen as neglect. Niffenegger believes that changes in generational experiences and attitudes between that era and now might also be fueling the negative reactions. It is peppered with details from Niffenegger’s young adult years in Chicago’s art and music scene of the 80s, and steeped in the experiences of people who grew up in the 70s, giving it a specific appeal to GenX readers who were briefly ascendent as a trend-making demographic in the late 90s-early 2000s. The Time Traveler’s Wife is also, ironically, a product of its time. When it gets adapted by someone like Steven Moffat, best known to audiences as the showrunner of the all-ages science fiction series Doctor Who from 2007-2017 and BBC’s modern-day version of Sherlock Holmes, and takes on the surface qualities of a sci-fi tinged romantic comedy, the parts that the author deliberately included to discomfort readers strike an especially discordant note. People react to it through the lens of uncomplicated genre expectations, not as a troublesome, arty work of literature from a West Coast indie press that is willing to let readers deal with their own “ick factor” when assessing Henry and Clare’s complicated relationship. The Time Traveler’s Wife’s extraordinary commercial success stripped away this context and complexity. It has aspects of science fiction in its use of time travel, as well as a beautifully realized and tragic romance at its heart. The book, like Niffenegger’s visual aesthetic, is multi-layered, gothic, self-aware, and difficult to compartmentalize. It was accepted by a small independent publisher, MacAdam/Cage, and I would have been happy to sell a few thousand copies.” “I thought it would be interesting to try to tell a story just in words, without leaning on pictures. “It was the first novel I ever wrote,” she said. Niffenegger, who is also an accomplished visual artist, wrote The Time Traveler’s Wife between 19, when she was in her late 30s, as an experiment.
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