A Review of 'The Time Traveler's Wife' by Audrey Niffenegger

"A most untraditional love story, this is the celebrated tale of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who involuntarily travels through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course.  Henry and Clare's passionate affair endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trap that tests the strength of fate and basks in the bonds of love."

I truly love a good romance novel!  'The Time Traveler's Wife,' while it shares most qualities that any given romance novel has, is just too beautiful to ignore or set aside.  It deals with a man (Henry) that desperately wants to be "there" all the time, but in sad fact, he can't be.  Without having read the book or seeing the movie, I might have thought about how cool it would be to be in love with a time traveler.  The only thing is, I would still be thinking along the lines of control and time machines.

I was really worried about the novel being as difficult to keep up with as the movie was.  I shouldn't have worried though.  Ms. Niffenegger is such an intelligent and talented writer that she made it work, making sure to let the readers know Clare's age, Henry's age, and the date (day, month, and year).

I was really neat to watch Clare and then Alba grow up) and even Henry a bit, whenever older Henry ran into his eight-year-old self while time traveling.  Towards the beginning, Henry seemed to follow Clare's life in a roughly chronological order, jumping forward, then back, then forward again.

Almost anything that could have gone wrong was avoided and anything that wasn't was very minor.  Ms.  Niffenegger did a fabulous job writing a touching yet tragic novel that I will surely reread in my future.

I just had some thoughts that I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to discuss with me: If Alba was part of Henry's fate (which is a huge motif in this novel) why is it that she never appeared in Henry's past until the end of the novel?  She exists somewhere in time, so why didn't Henry acknowledge that there was a little girl that kept appearing in his life?

This novel is romantic and tragic; heartwarming and heart-wrenching.  If you are one of those people that cries while reading a sad book, keep a box of tissues by your bedside/arm chair.

I give 'The Time Traveler's Wife':

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude