The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The Time Traveler’s Wife was talked and talked about as an excellent read, so I had to pick it up and see what all the fuss was about. What a surprise – it was a good as the critics said it was.

In The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger tells the story of Henry and Clare. Henry is a librarian (yeah for librarians!) who has an unfortunate affliction – he time travels, spontaneously and without any real control over where he ends up.  The only real guarantee is that it ends up being sometime and somewhere in his lifeline. One of these leaps in time brings him to Clare’s field outside of her family’s large house in the country. She is pretty young at the time, and from there begins a life-long friendship and eventually romance. Time travel can be a problem for a relationship, though, as Henry’s age and his meetings with Clare end up varying from middle-aged Henry to young man Henry while she continues in a normal lifeline and ages normally. 

It sounds like it could be silly, a gimmicky, sappy love story, but Niffenegger never lets the story reduce itself to that. Henry and Clare build a life together as they can, and along that love and relationship all the struggles of a normal relationship are aired. It’s a beautifully detailed story, further enhanced by all of the secondary characters and plots. There is Henry’s musician father, their eccentric best friends, Henry’s other girlfriends, Clare’s family, the doctor brought in to study Henry’s genetic abnormality that allows him to travel in time, and Clare and Henry’s child. It’s a very rich and engrossing fabric that enhances rather than takes away from the story. 

Part fantasy, part romance, part bittersweet story of life lived; The Time Traveler’s Wife was one of the best books I have read last year. It was engrossing, thought provoking, and beautiful. You end up with a picture of life lived is worth the weirdness and struggles.  Instead of focusing on the eccentricity time travel brings into their lives, you really are left with one thing: Henry is Clare’s savior and she, his.

Rating: 5 Purrs for a story that sticks in your head for a long, long time