Reading Group Guide questions from the back of the book #13

Both Gomez and Celia warn Clare about Henry. "This guy would chew you up and spit you out . . . He's not at all what you need," says Gomez (p.436). Can we simply chalk those warnings up to jealousy, or might the observers be correct? Is Henry more ruthless and amoral than he appears to Clare? How do you interpret Henry's statement: "I'm not exactly the man she's known from earliest childhood. I'm a close approximation she is guiding surreptitiously toward a me that exists in her mind's eye" (pp. 152-153)?

These comments were certainly not made out of jealousy. Yes, Gomez was secretly in love with Clare, and yes, Celia wanted Henry's ex-girlfriend Ingrid to be happy, but they each had valid reasons for warning Clare about Henry. Gomez knew Henry before Henry met Clare (but after Clare met Henry). Henry's condition forced him to live a life of crime, but besides that he had an inherently violent nature. He would suddenly find himself in a different time and a different place, completely naked and with no belongings. His only options, he felt, were to steal from and mug people. When Clare met Henry, he was already married to the future Clare, and his younger days of womanizing and drinking were over. She met the mature, solid Henry, who of course still had to deal with the time traveling, but was slightly less turbulent. So when Clare met Henry again when they were both in their twenties, that's the Henry she was expecting. Instead she met the more immature Henry, into drugs and alcohol and women. This is the Henry that Gomez and Celia knew, so their warnings to Clare were perfectly valid. However, Clare had the gift of foresight, and knew that Henry wouldn't be like this forever. She knew that eventually he would be the self-controlled, good Henry she knew when she was a girl.