The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

Read for the TBR Reading Challenge.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is the story of Henry DeTamble, a man suffering from chrono-displacement, which means that he travels back and forth along the length of his life, never knowing where/when he’ll end up, and his wife Clare, who plods along the linear path of time.

This was my first Paperspine book. I’ve been meaning to read it for ages, but it’s never in the library, which speaks well for its popularity. I was also amused to see it in a recent issue of Bookmarks in their first part of a survey of science fiction. While I do agree that time travel is a very science fiction sort of subject, I can’t help but label this book as pure fiction. It simple doesn’t ring any of my scifi bells.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect of this novel going into it. The only thing I’d read prior was several mentions of it in a forum thread about books that people hadn’t been able to finish, where a number of people listed this book because they were completely sceeved by Henry’s relationship with Clare when she was a child. I actually thought that part of the book was rather sweet. I rather enjoyed the entire story. It was a fascinating look at what your life would be like if you weren’t living it linearly. There were several story points that were particularly interesting, but in fairness to anyone that hasn’t read the book yet, I won’t list them here, because the resolution of those story lines is the fun of the book, and I’d recommend it to anyone.