time is nothing

Books are the quickest and cheapest form of escape. Sometimes the vacations are the fluffy rum runner variety, such as Bergdorf Blondes. And sometimes they are the breath-taking-gut-wrenching variety, such as The Time Traveler's Wife.

The story is not told in the standard order; it flits back and forth and turns the concept of time travel completely on its head. The characters are decidedly imperfect but still likeable. There are bonafide literary references while time is being bent.

The ending breaks your heart. I can remember the last time I cried after finishing a book (if you didn't cry when Dumbledore died then you need a soul transplant), but this one made me sob. (And I am not a crybaby.)

I sleep all day. Noises flit around the house - garbage truck in the alley, rain, tree rapping against the bedroom window. I sleep. I inhabit sleep firmly, willing it, wielding it, pushing away dreams, refusing, refusing. Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion. The phone rings and rings. I have turned off the machine that answers with Henry's voice. It is afternoon, it is night, it is morning. Everything is reduced to this bed, this endless slumber that makes the days into one day, makes time stop, stretches and compacts time until it is meaningless.