Audrey Niffenegger’s innovative debut, The Time Traveler’s Wife, is the story of Clare, a beautiful art student, and Henry, an adventuresome librarian, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-three and Henry thirty-one. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: … Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity in his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.
The Time Traveler’s Wife depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare’s marriage and their passionate love for each other as the story unfolds from both points of view. Clare and Henry attempt to live normal lives, pursuing familiar goals–steady jobs, good friends, children of their own. All of this is threatened by something they can neither prevent nor control, making their story intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.
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I actually saw the film before reading the book. The book is a bit more complex to read but very enjoyable once you get into it.
I was fascinated by the idea of time travel, and was excited to read this book. While I found it entertaining, the large print edition had some grammatical errors, and the dates, times and ages of the characters was kind of difficult to follow.
The characters sex drives got to be kind of annoying; every time they turned around they were going at it. Perhaps it was written with a future movie in mind?
I felt the book could have been shorter; it was almost like the author’s editor required a certain amount of pages.
But all in all it was a good read. I seem to be in the minority in not giving it a better rating, so go ahead and give it a read.
A great “what if” kind of book.
This is a mediocre book written around lives affected by unacceptablely dishonest and inadequate communication within a family. Similarly themed and equally mediocre are Ng’s Everything I Never Told You and Fowlers’s We are all Completely Beside Ourselves, which is marginally better written.
Tedious, at best
A great story n breathless.
Wonderful.
The reader has to not think too hard about whether the time travel details makes sense, but definitely an enjoyable book.
Loved this story. This one really pulled at my heart strings.
I liked it, I never knew what was going to happen next.
This book has one of the best endings of any books I have read. They completely missed it in the movie!
Not the kind of book I normally read. It was somewhat difficult for me to get into it, but it poses a question about time, and makes us think more about the nature of reality. I read it quite some time ago, so have forgotten some specifics, but I remember the tragedy of the love story. It seemed to go rather slowly at times, with more wordiness than needed, but I’ve learned to read as the author writes, and make use of their use of description, settings, character-explanation, etc. The time traveling and it’s repercussions can also be confusing, but read it if this sort of question intrigues you.
This was a pretty good book, it kept me interested. It can get a little confusing on what time “henry” is in but it was still a great read.
Book club read–did not enjoy it much.
I loved this book. It was original, not like anything I ever read.
My very favoritebook ever.
One of my favorite books ever. Gives meaning to love, life and eternity.
The author spends one half of the book introducing the reader to two really wonderful and interesting people, and then she spends the last half of the book making them really, really miserable, until they die. Super depressing.
Compelling story of love for a partner, for a child, of vulnerability, risk, heart break, and healing.
Sweet, sad, different from the movie. Worth the read.