A Leap of Faith in Time Travel: When H. G. Wells Meets Emily Brontë

Alba’s World Is Already Out of Order

When I first started looking at Audrey Niffenegger’s Life Out of Order, my mind naturally went back to The Time Traveler’s Wife. Alba DeTamble is the daughter of Henry and Clare, and like her father, she has inherited an involuntary ability to travel through time. But the more I looked at Alba’s story, the more I noticed something unexpected. The novel seems to have two distinct sides: one rooted in science fiction, with timeslipping, artificial intelligence, political inaction, climate change and an uncertain future, and another that feels almost gothic, with the eerie Yellow House and the mysterious Museum of Lost Souls. That combination led me to a strange comparison: H. G. Wells meets Emily Brontë.

Before I go any further, that is my comparison. It isn’t a tagline from Niffenegger, her publisher or a reviewer, and I’m not suggesting she set out to write Wuthering Heights with time travel. I’m simply looking at what appears to be happening inside the novel and seeing two very different literary traditions coming together. Wells gives me the science-fiction side, while Brontë comes to mind when I think about the darker atmosphere and the kind of love that can become painful, obsessive and impossible to escape.

Alba calls her involuntary jumps through time “timeslipping,” and the idea immediately gives her life a problem most of us will never have. She can disappear from one period and suddenly find herself somewhere else, making relationships, family and even having a home remarkably complicated. She is a gifted violinist surrounded by artists and activists, but she is also trying to build a life while the world around her becomes increasingly unstable. Zach belongs to her present, while Oliver is another time traveler who understands something about the existence Alba has inherited.

Then there is the Yellow House, a Victorian property Alba owns across centuries, giving her a secluded place to land when timeslipping suddenly takes over. The Museum of Lost Souls adds another wonderfully strange dimension, functioning as a digital sanctuary for forgotten memories and lost artifacts under the care of her mysterious stepsister, Isadora. These details make the book sound much more imaginative than a simple continuation of the original time-travel premise. Niffenegger appears to have created an entire environment around Alba’s condition, where memory, history and place are almost as unstable as time itself.

The H. G. Wells Side

This is where Wells enters my thinking. Time travel is the engine of Alba’s story, but Niffenegger doesn’t appear to use it simply as an adventure device. The real question is what happens to ordinary human life when time stops behaving normally. Love becomes harder when you can disappear without warning. Family becomes harder when decades can separate people in an instant. Even the idea of home changes when you can suddenly find yourself somewhere else in history.

The future also isn’t presented as some wonderful playground waiting to be explored. Life Out of Order appears to lean heavily into science fiction and the problems shaping that future, including artificial intelligence, political failure and climate change. That gives the novel a much broader scope than The Time Traveler’s Wife. Henry and Clare were primarily dealing with the devastating effect of time travel on an intimate relationship. Alba appears to be dealing with the same impossible condition while also facing a world that has problems of its own.

Then Emily Brontë Enters the Picture

This is where my comparison takes its leap. When I think about Wuthering Heights, what stays with me isn’t simply the gothic setting. It is the overwhelming connection between Catherine and Heathcliff. Their relationship is obsessive, painful and almost impossible to escape, and separation never really ends it. Their lives remain shaped by a bond that has become larger than ordinary romance.

That is the part of Brontë I see in Alba’s story. The circumstances are completely different, but the emotional problem feels familiar. Alba can love someone and still be unable to build an ordinary life with them because something beyond her control keeps intervening. Catherine and Heathcliff are separated by circumstance, choice and eventually death. Alba is separated from people by time. The mechanism is different, but the emotional cruelty is surprisingly similar.

There is also something unmistakably gothic about a character who can be pulled out of her own life and dropped into another period. In Wuthering Heights, the past refuses to disappear. In Life Out of Order, Alba can actually return to it. The Yellow House reinforces that feeling, with its Victorian setting and existence across different centuries. The science fiction gives the story its machinery, but places like the Yellow House give it an atmosphere that feels much closer to the world of gothic fiction.

This Isn’t The Time Traveler’s Wife Again

That’s what makes the sequel interesting to me. I don’t want another Henry and Clare story with different names, and fortunately, the premise doesn’t sound like one. The Time Traveler’s Wife was an intimate story about love, marriage, family and loss, with time travel constantly threatening the life Henry and Clare were trying to build. Life Out of Order appears to take that basic inheritance and open it up to a much larger world.

Alba isn’t simply trying to figure out whom she loves or how to control her timeslipping. She is trying to understand how to live in a future shaped by artificial intelligence, political inaction and climate change. Her personal life is out of order, but so is the world around her. That gives the novel a bigger question than simply whether Alba can find love: How do you build a meaningful life when you aren’t sure what kind of future you’re building it in?

There have been mixed reactions to the pacing, particularly as the novel moves between Alba’s relationships, its science-fiction ideas and its larger social concerns. I can understand that criticism, but it doesn’t make the premise less intriguing to me. If anything, I’d rather see Niffenegger take a creative risk than simply recreate the formula that made the first novel successful. Timeslipping, the Yellow House, the Museum of Lost Souls and the troubled future suggest that she is trying to do something considerably more ambitious.

Taking the Leap

So yes, I’m sticking with my slightly unusual comparison. To me, Life Out of Order feels like H. G. Wells meets Emily Brontë. Wells represents the science-fiction machinery and the fascination with time, while Brontë represents the darker emotional territory of impossible love, separation and longing. Niffenegger brings those elements together through Alba, a woman who has inherited the ability to move through time but has no guarantee that she can control where, or when, she belongs.

That’s what has me interested in this sequel. I’m not expecting The Time Traveler’s Wife again. I’m expecting Niffenegger to take the idea that made that novel so memorable and push it into stranger territory, where science fiction, gothic atmosphere, romance and an increasingly troubled future all occupy the same story.

H. G. Wells gives us the time travel. Emily Brontë gives us the ache. Niffenegger gives us Alba. And I think that combination is worth taking a leap of faith on.

Recommended Reading

• The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger — Revisit Henry and Clare’s extraordinary love story before entering Alba’s very different experience with time travel.
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë — The gothic classic behind my unexpected comparison between Brontë’s impossible love and Alba’s complicated relationships.
• The Time Machine by H. G. Wells — The classic time-travel novel that provides the science-fiction half of my “H. G. Wells meets Emily Brontë” idea.
• Audrey Niffenegger — Explore the author’s work and the creative world behind both The Time Traveler’s Wife and Life Out of Order.

Tony M.

If this article made you think, brought back a memory, or made you see something differently, I’d love to hear from you. Send me an email at sandboxworld@gmail.com. I read every message personally and, with your permission, may feature your thoughts in a future article because the best stories are the ones we share.