# Review: "The Time Traveler's Wife"



## littlemissattitude (May 28, 2006)

_I posted this review over on my blog, but I really wanted to share it with you all here as well._

First of all, fair disclosure makes it essential that before I review The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger, I must tell you, dear reader, that I am mad for anything dealing with time travel.  It might very well be my favorite science fiction/fantasy theme, and I will read just about anything that even hints at dealing with the concept.

That disclosure taken care of, this is a fabulous book.  I can’t think of any better descriptive word.  I was entranced by the story, by the way the story is told, by the characters - it is just a fabulous story, fabulously well told.  I’ve been having trouble finding books that will hold my attention just lately.  This one grabbed my attention and did not let go; I only didn’t sit and read it straight through because of things like, oh, having to work.

We are taken into the life of Henry DeTamble, who is able to travel through time.  Well, able might not be the best word - he spontaneously travels through time, not able to control when he goes, or where, or how much time he spends in the past or, less often, the future.  This turns out to be a genetic trait, something that eventually comes to be called Chrono-Displacement Disorder.  Because, after all, every condition must have its own name here in the twenty-first century.  Different things trigger his travels.  The first time it happens is on his fifth birthday.  His parents have taken him to the Field Museum in Chicago for his birthday, and he just does not want to leave.  That night, he travels there again and spends the night with an older version of himself.  It will not be the last time he spends time with himself in an older or younger edition.

While he cannot control his travel, Henry often travels to particular places and events.  He visits his mother’s death in a car crash over and over.  And he often goes to a particular meadow, where he gets to know a girl named Claire.  The first time they meet, Claire is six years old and Henry is thirty-six.  As they meet again and again through the years, Claire falls in love with Henry while he already knows that they will eventually marry.  After a two-year period in which they do not meet, Claire comes across a non-time-traveling Henry when she visit’s the library where he works.  She is 20, he is 28.  She practically jumps him; he has no idea who she is since all of the times he has time traveled to visit her he has been older than he is on that day.  She tries to explain who she is, what their relationship is, but he is clueless and she has to ask him out.

The story, like Henry, jumps back and forth through time.  That might have been difficult to follow, except that the author indicates for every scene what the date is and how old both Claire and Henry is at the time.  It also brings a heartbreaking tone to the telling, as the reader waits for something to happen that we know will take place but some of the characters do not know.  It all works wonderfully, though, to draw the reader into the story.

The characters are wonderfully drawn.  We see them warts and all, intimately.  I can’t recall too many novels where I have felt so much a part of the lives of the characters, as if they are living people rather than ink on paper with just a semblance of life.  It is easy to care for these people, and to worry about what will happen to them.

If I have any quibble with the book at all, and it is a small one and probably just a relic of my own perceptions, it is that it often seems to be taking place in an earlier time.  Despite the pop culture and pop music references to places like McDonalds, to people like Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, the book had a feel of taking place in some earlier era.  I’m not quite sure why that is, but it was sometimes jarring to me to see some of the modern references.

On the other hand, the inclusion of actual historical events provided what was, for me, one of the most poignant moments in the book.  Henry, having traveled into the future as well as the past, knows what will take place on the morning of September 11, 2001.  He has told Claire about it, and on that morning she wakes up early only to find Henry and their daughter sitting in front of the TV.  “How come you’re up,” she asks him.  “I thought you said it wasn’t for a couple of hours yet.”  His reply to her is, “I couldn’t sleep.  I wanted to listen to the world being normal for a little while longer.”  That scene brought tears to my eyes.  It made so much sense to me.  I miss that normal, non-paranoid world, that world where a congressman hearing a construction worker using a nail gun didn’t automatically think it was weapons fire and cause a panic and the shutdown of a whole office building in Washington, D.C., which happened yesterday, as I write this.

Enjoy this book for just what it is, an extremely good story.  Or enjoy it for the ideas it presents the reader to think about at leisure - and there are plenty of them in there.  But please, read this book.


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## BookStop (May 28, 2006)

I agree 100%, littlemiss.  I gave copies of this book as gifts to all branches of my family and friends under the stipulation that they read it and pass it on if they like it.  Not only does no one have anything negative to say, but they've all had to go out and buy their own copies to reread because they had to pass it on.  It's that good.


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## littlemissattitude (May 28, 2006)

I read it out of the library, so I'll likely have to go buy a copy now.  Because I will be rereading this one.


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## dwndrgn (May 28, 2006)

That's it.  I've tried to pick this one up several times and each time put it back as something I wouldn't enjoy.  Now you've done it.  I'll have to get myself a copy now.

By the way, we're on different time schedules these days I think, I rarely see your posts on the 'New Posts' list when I get on.  Life gets busy.  Sigh.  Anyways, must go now, it's bedtime.


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## Tea is my copilot (May 28, 2006)

A beautiful review. It caught that feeling.


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## littlemissattitude (May 28, 2006)

dwndrgn said:
			
		

> Life gets busy.  Sigh.



Tell me about it.

I think you'll like the book.  I wasn't sure that I was going to - it looked more mainstream (for lack of a better word) than most of what I enjoy reading.  But it hooked me in right away and didn't let go until I had finished.  Still hasn't let me go, really, because I keep thinking about it and some of the issues it raises.


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## Nevermynd (Jul 12, 2006)

Great review!  My fiancee had been bugging me forever to read this book and I finally did a few weeks ago. It was a really good book and it really did hook you in.

I found it really different; it doesn't tote itself as a SF novel though it did deal with time travel.  I would classify it as "science realism".  What makes it different from a SF novel, in my opinion, was that it wasn't really about time travel but rather the relationship between two people and how they cope with the a unique "condition".  The time travel was almost an incidental aspect.  I liken it to let's say the relationship between an amnesiac and their spouse or someone with Alzeihmer's and their spouse or even a coma patient and their spouse.  In all situations, I think their would be the same type of temporal disjointedness.

Don't get me wrong, time travel does play a very important role but the key to the book was the relationship between Henry and Claire.  If it were a real SF novel (in the sense that most know it as), it probably would have been all about Henry being hunted down by the governement or some mad scientist bent on capturing and studying him to abuse his power.  Henry would have to keep his ability secret from everyone he loves to protect them the "bad guys" else they be captured and held as hostage.   In essence, all that other paranoia, action packed, technical stuff that has been done before in the world of SF.

The Time Traveler's Wife is something different and a fantastic read.


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## j d worthington (Jul 12, 2006)

Mmmmm -- I don't know about that. I've read more than a few very quiet, mature sf stories where the focus was very much on how this extraordinary situation affected the protagonist and those in their lives, without all the whizz-bang stuff. Frankly, the best sf is often of this very sort....

But I do think I'm going to have to check out this book. The more I hear, the more I think I'd really like it.


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## carrie221 (Jul 19, 2006)

This book sounds wonderful I will have to buy a copy and read it. 

You make is sound very beautiful and touching.


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## carrie221 (Aug 23, 2006)

I bought the book and now I have fallen in love with it. 

This has become one of my favorite books!

Are there any other time travel books you could recommend for me or something else that feels anything like this?


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## BookStop (Aug 24, 2006)

j. d. worthington said:
			
		

> Mmmmm -- I don't know about that. I've read more than a few very quiet, mature sf stories where the focus was very much on how this extraordinary situation affected the protagonist and those in their lives, without all the whizz-bang stuff. Frankly, the best sf is often of this very sort....
> 
> But I do think I'm going to have to check out this book. The more I hear, the more I think I'd really like it.


 
Hey - jd. D'you ever get around to this one? I'm going to reread it again today I think.


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## rpackmanus (Sep 2, 2009)

crap! science realism??? really?
i read real sci-fi from the late 40s to early 80s.
you want a real time traveler story read POUL ANDERSON 1973 pub signet 451-y6925  THERE WILL BE TIME. this book has real purpose and direction with such an ability.  i bet your author read it. if not, she should have.
turning the concept into an excuse for a love story makes me hurl.


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## AE35Unit (Sep 2, 2009)

Actually the film sounds quite entertaining. Will give it a watch.


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## Connavar (Sep 2, 2009)

The film does look generic love story by hollywood to me.   Nothing to do with how good the book is or isnt of course.

I do wonder about the book if its more love story in SF setting or if its a story that is more than the love story.


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## Ian Whates (Sep 2, 2009)

I don't think Gwyneth Jones will ever forgive me for forcing her to read _The Time Traveler's_ _Wife_ in advance of a panel discussing 'the best time travel novels of all time'. Her two word dismissal of the book was, "Chick lit!"

I quite enjoyed it myself.


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## J-WO (Sep 3, 2009)

Its _genius_ is to crossbreed sf with Chick lit. No mean feat when you think about it.


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## Jayaprakash Satyamurthy (Mar 4, 2010)

I'm with Gwyneth Jones on this one. Also, I found the characters shallow and self-absorbed and much of the 'romance' deeply creepy.


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## Fried Egg (Mar 29, 2010)

Connavar said:


> The film does look generic love story by hollywood to me.   Nothing to do with how good the book is or isnt of course.
> 
> I do wonder about the book if its more love story in SF setting or if its a story that is more than the love story.


Indeed. I just watched the film and I felt that it fell between two stools. The non-linear plot is too complex for your average romantic drama fan not used to time travel stories, and the emphasis on the romantic drama was too much for your average SF/Fantasy fan. 

I wouldn't class this as SF attall. More fantasy really. The rationale behind the condition this man had that caused him to move through time wasn't explored at all. There didn't seem to be any reason behind when and where he travelled to either. It didn't really matter as far as the film was concerned, it was all about looking at the effect of this phenomenon on their relationship.


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## Connavar (Mar 29, 2010)

Thats why i didnt try to read the book.  The romance angle you can easily take if it was rated for sf details,writing.  When you read about the book not much is written about the science,time travel elements as sf element.

Also a big minus i always find it too calculating when they crossbread romance with other popular genres.   Like they have done so well commercially in urban fantasy and the hole parnanormal romance thing.


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