Time travel. To sum up the gist of the book in one word (fine, two), that would be it. The story's about a guy (Henry) who is born with a disease that allow's him to travel in time, but it's actually more about the impossible love story between him and his lover, Clare. Both Henry and Clare write in a journal format, recording his life and hers and everything in between. A book that is at parts brutally frank, insanely complex and unbelievably illogical, and above all, sadly romantic.

The title may suggest that Clare's part of the story overshadows Henry's but upon close examination, one will realise that there is no Clare or Henry's part of the story, there is only THEIR story. Their lives are so interwined by time and fate that it weaves itself into a complex web, making it impossible to get out of this entanglement. But there is no real need to. Is it fate that brought them together, or was it planned? It may seem like the latter, what with Henry making known to Clare all the dates of their meeting since she was 6, but when you think about it, you will draw a blank. Did their love start when Henry was 28, when Clare met him at Newberry library? Or did their love start when Clare was 6, and abruptly visited by a grown man, displaced by time, with not a stitch on him? It becomes one of those blurry chicken-and-egg, causeandeffect questions that make the story all the more perplexing and beautiful.

Henry's screwed up chrono-displacement disorder is nothing to be envious about, considering it turns him up at the strangest of places, stark naked. But it also seems that it is this imperfection, this defect, that allowed Henry to lead his beautiful life, the ability to visit his lover at different points oh her life, to see, hear, feel people who have died, like his mother and to meet his daughter after his death. It brought him much pain, but it brought him much joy as well.

This ability to vanish without a trace, without his control makes him seemingly above Time, beyond the controls of time. But ultimately Henry does die and time does run out for him. His only consolation is that his time does not run continuously, but is more like a myriad of memories, of people and places jumbled together and he is here, there and everywhere at the same time. Time does not seem to run out for him, for he dies but lives in the memory of his wife and more so in his daughter's (who time travels too) memory. But the greater message behind this book is that time's ultimate purpose is to bring purpose to our life. It is the very knowledge that time is not unlimited that makes everything we do carry value, bear significance, make a difference.

Although this book's theme is so surreal, time travel is a concept so out of this work and so anarchiac that renders this book all but a novel, one must question himself - Aren't we all time travellers? We often dwell in memories of the past. Sometimes we experience something so out of the ordinary, so out of the common routine that makes us feel as if we have travelled to another time and place altogether. For me, the most tangible instance is when going overseas. When i went NZ last year, the journey on streets that were so different from that of home, and then thinking back about Singapore, as if i was there a second ago, makes it seem so much like time travelling. Simply put, aren't we all time travellers in our own ways? Some do it to escape, others to cherish, but we all do it in our own ways, don't we?

Therefore, i strongly encourage you to pick up this novel. Of course, not everyone will love it, especially with its complex themes and sometimes perplexing concepts, like how Henry can be two of the same person at the same time? Like whether the knowledge of what happens in the future gives us any power to change it? Questions and questions that make the book so much more mind boggling but beautiful. As a warning, do not read this book if you are squamish about words that begin with f and end with k or if you cannot take the explicit details of the activity that begins with s and ends with x, that Henry and Clare so passionately engage in. Make sure your parents read it with you.

And night falls as i finish the last page of the book, a poignant reminder that we are all travelling in time.

"Clock time is our bank manager, tax collector, police inspector; this inner time is our wife." - J.B. Priestley, Man and Time