Reading Group Guide questions from the back of the book #9

In theory Henry's time traveling should make him omniscient--at least as far as his own timeline is concerned--but Clare knows things about him that he does not. What accounts for this? What role does the characters' knowledge--and the gaps in their knowledge--play in the novel?

When Clare first met Henry, she was six and he was around thirty six. When Henry first met Clare, she was twenty and he was twenty eight. Because of this, they never got to meet each other for a first time. They never got to meet each other without one of them already knowing the other. When Clare met Henry when she was six, he was coming from the future where he and grown up Clare were already married. When Henry met Clare for the first time, he had never seen her before, even though she had known him for years, they had been friends and then lovers. It's almost as if they had to have multiple relationships with different versions of themselves. Henry would go from Clare his wife, to Clare the six year old. He of course couldn't talk about the same things with Clare as a six year old as he could with Clare his wife, or do the same things, because that would be horribly inappropriate and illegal. It also posed difficulties for them in Clare's teenage years, because Henry would visit her one day as a 40 year old, and then the next day as a 30 year old, and Clare would have to try her best to keep track of what this Henry knew about her. They couldn't really carry a conversation from one day to the next because she might be talking to a Henry who hadn't had that conversation with her yet. If it were me, I would have been extremely frustrated with the situation.