The Time Traveler's Wife - by Audrey Niffenegger

And I thought my love life was complicated. Meet Henry DeTamble. He is not your average Romeo. In fact, as far as relationships go, one with him would be the most complicated you could fathom. Picture long distance, but sporadic. Henry has the fictional disorder of "chrono-impairment". He randomly and uncontrollably time travels, often to different events in his own life. He re-experiences his mother's car crash over and over, and often disrupts his own future with unexpected appearances. But amidst a horrifyingly complex life, he manages to pull off one of the greatest, truest love stories I've read in awhile. (To be fair, I don't really read romance novels. Not even the not-dirty kind). Please click "read more" for the full review.


Ok, let's get right down to it. This book is a fine example of adult literature that is not annoyingly crude, overly childish, or ridiculously complicated. If I had one complaint, it would be that there are about nine too many sex scenes. But, they are tastefully done, and not awkward and random. All in all, the book is honest and real. I thought that the nature of Clare and Henry's relationship alluded to the feeling of meeting someone and feeling as if you'd known them for your whole life. Niffenegger seemed to make the claim that time has no bearing on love, and that even in the other's absence, love is persistant and need not vanish. The story doesn't pretend to make relationships these easy and attainable things, either. It's truly impressive the way that Niffenegger turns a completely science-fiction-y plot into something that speaks a lot of truth about love and relationships. It's the near over-dramatization and unusual portrayal of themes of classic love stories that makes The Time Traveler's Wife most interesting.


A few words of advice to the cavalier reader: First, do not re-read the text in order to try to make the story make sense. It works itself out, and nothing about how the time travel works is left up to question. I promise. If you are confused (and you will be), just keep reading. The aspects of Henry's time travel are like twine that only the author can braid together for you. It's useless trying to figure it out for yourself! Second, there are issues with the time travel. (SPOILER ALERT). For example, Henry time travels back to the scene of his mother's car crash hundreds of times. In other parts of the book, Henry time travels back to a point in his own life, and there are multiple Henrys. So, we know that when he time travels, he does not become invisible or anything like that. So, there would have eventually been hundreds of Henrys at his mother's car crash site. Each time Henry went back, he'd see the Henry from the last time he time traveled to the car crash site. However, he doesn't. There is only the current Henry, and the Henry who was in the car with his mother and did not die. My point is, don't be like me, and get hung up on the flaws in Niffenegger's time travel story. There is a reason we can't time travel. It's too confusing, and our brains would explode.