My idea of the ultimate love story...

So I know I already posted today but I guess I just felt like talking about this too. I've been sitting here today flipping through a novel I've read several times and I can't get over how much I just, love it.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

I remember the first time I ever read through it I couldn't wait to get on livejournal and blog about it. It was one of the only things I even thought about blogging those days, but I felt like everyone should read it. The second time through, I became passionately entranced. The third time reading it I became obsessed with the film version (which has yet to be released) and sought out every detail of information on it I could find.

This last time I read it was innocent enough, or started that way. I, having felt discouraged by the challenge at the FCG, felt like I should start sooner rather than later so that I may end up finishing something for it. I searched and searched for motivation and then while on GM reading an old post I made I saw my signature picture and it hit me. There was no story so beautiful, no love so perfect, no tale so deserving of another look than this one and I knew what I wanted to write.

I finished my piece in record time. It may not be the best I've ever written but it was the one I can doubtlessly say that I've had the most inspiration for. Once I'd finished writing though I still felt drawn to the novel, as though there was something left for me to get out of it for the evening. There was still something left that I hadn't experienced yet, a splash of magic from the novel I hadn't truly encountered this time.

I sat back, flipped it open to a random page, and began reading. Not an hour later I had to close the book, sob, and then regain a sense of what I'd just read. Now I am a crier in some cases but generally I don't take to open sobbing at a book I've already read. I started on the page where Clare decides she wants a child and asks Henry to make a baby. I stopped when Alba was born.

Great, right? They had a baby. It's not that simple though. Because Henry's condition is a genetic disease it effected all of their children. Alba was their last chance. Six miscarriages, a vasectomy, and the very real possibility of Clare's death later she was born, and to them worth every second of their struggle for a child. But to read, watch, as each and every one of those babies were lost has always been one of the most profound things I've ever encountered in literature. The way they were described as laying in their mother's hands, gasping for breath. How helpless Clare or Henry felt to protect their children. How they had to watch them die...

The book is not dark though and that's perhaps the absolutely most beautiful thing about it. It's the story of two people. It' s a life story. It's also a romance though, a powerful love tale, a reminder that two people can fall in love. There simply isn't another book out there like this one. It is, and will be forever more, my idea of the ultimate love story. Sacrifice, waiting, longing, love, loss, passion—Henry and Clare share everything.

When the movie comes out and you're all in love with the story I want you, each and every one, to remember that there is a novel and I have loved it for many years.