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The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger A most remarkable story of love that withstands those normal, every day challenges while facing the impossible problem of a man who involuntarily travels through time. Yeah, yeah, yeah; it was a bestseller...but there's a DAMN good reason!
  I’m not quite sure how I’d made it through book stores in the past year without having heard of this book. It seems that it’s not only been a bestseller, a "People’s Top Ten Books Of The Year," and a Today Show book club selection, but that it’s also in the process of being made into a movie! I simply was looking for interesting fiction that might contain something along the lines of a sweet love story. You see, I’d had some not-too-wonderful dating experiences recently and was hoping for a bit of an escape where some lucky heroine actually FOUND romance that worked.
A romance that worked – this I certainly found. This first novel from Ms. Niffennegger is quite remarkable in it’s telling of the most unconventional romance that I’ve ever read about. But it’s more than a romance. It’s an incredibly intense journey through two lives that are fleshed out with such care that the reader is drawn in more and more with each page.
Our main characters, Henry DeTamble and Claire Abshire, are so fully realized that the reader can’t help but empathize with the remarkable and seemingly impossible predicament that they find themselves in. Henry is “a dashing, adventuresome librarian who involuntarily travels through time” and Claire “an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course.” They are, of course, a couple who must find ways to understand and live with the fact that Henry’s life has him in many different times, sometimes at once, and that he pops in and out of Claire’s life when she’s many different ages, and so is he.
Our author chooses to tell the story with alternating viewpoints between Claire and Henry. This gives different views on the same situations and sometimes reveals details that otherwise wouldn’t be seen in a traditional narrative. It’s a very engaging and compelling way to tell a story that contains so many twists and turns as this one does.
The plot is quite convoluted, as is to be expected in a book where one of the main characters is always traveling through time, but this is, at it’s core, a story about the bonds of love. I’m not fond of the saccharine sweet love story, and while this has it’s moments, the majority of the writing really hit home while working through the everyday issues that all couples come up against, but with the added twist of time travel.
Personally I would have a hard time seeing this brilliant novel made into a movie, as one of it’s pleasures is the subtleties in character development that’s created by the minute details that can only be fully experienced on a printed page. I am curious however because I am now a complete and utter fan of both Henry and Claire and I would, I think, follow them wherever time may take them.
Reviewed by Ina
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.
518 pages, published by MacAdam/Cage Publishing.
ISBN: 1931561648
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