“The Time Traveler’s Wife”
by Audrey Niffenegger
Published: June 2004
ISBN: 0676976336

(Updated: February 27, 2005.)

From the Publisher…

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 finds himself periodically displaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity from 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.

Instead of attempting to describe this book myself, I will simply supply a link to a review written by someone who absolutely loved this book and then will write about where my opinion differs… http://www.januarymagazine.com/fiction/timetrav.html.

One of the most striking things in the review was the notion of “romanticism”. My reaction to that was “Oh. ?” Either I am not a romantic or I read many books that have relationships as a core element in them but I did not find this book “romantic”. There is definitely a love story running through this but for me it is the carrier and not the object… if that distinction makes sense.

What did completely catch me in this book was the notion of knowing without knowing, knowing without being able to change, knowing in order to understand. Time traveling backward or forward in the way of this novel is sort of the ultimate psychoanalysis (revisiting marking moments, looking at situations and people through varying perspectives and ages) combined with the possibility of having a history with people that goes back further than the real “time line” of the relationship, combined with the profound wish to check in on people and to have them check in on us once our “real” time together is over. I suppose that written that way, time traveling as per Audrey Niffenegger is the stepping back for perspective or the stepping in and appreciating that most of us forget to do most of the time but ought to.

It took me a little while to get caught in this novel but ultimately I did. It didn’t reach “can’t put it down” status for me but I certainly looked forward to picking it up again. My “couldn’t wait to get back to it” rating is between a three and a four out of five hearts. Closer to four though.