The Time Traveler's Wife

Rating:
Summary: people need to get lives
Review: What is the deal with these intense reviews? This is hardly a book to get worked up over. It IS poorly written and pretentious, the characters are all over the place and they are never developed. The dialouge is meager at best, and her descriptions are rote. With that in mind, I don't think this is a terrible book- just a bad one & I can't for the life of me understand why certain reviewers are getting so worked up. If you enjoyed the book, fine- I have no problem with that. I did not. I do think it's trite and agree that the supposed "vulgarity" wasn't 'offensive' in the I'm a prude sort of way- but that it was totally out of line with the characters and the tone in the novel. And with that in mind, people seem to like this pap because it has a "mystery" attached to it. Oooh- what will happen next? Will she see him naked? tee hee. Just like in "The Lovely Bones" which is a terrible book, and "The Secret Life of Bees" which is a mediocre book (at very best), and "The Da Vinci Code" which is a mindless potboiler but at least knows it- "The Time Traveller's Wife" is no different because it too is filled with narrative cliches. It's amazing that low brow literature like this passes for quality because it's "different". Well, it ain't that different, and even if it was, different doesn't mean good.
With all this in mind, the glowing reviews are very suspicious- people who use terms like "brilliant young artist" to describe an author isn't just a casual reader, but generally a friend. And these overly positive reviews are not likely to be honest ones. They seem like gloated family members of the author with bones to pick with anyone who doesn't praise this book. And you know what? I don't praise it, and yes, it is poorly written, so there, nya!

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Summary: IF YOU LIKE LOVE STORIES
Review: This is one of the best love stories I have encountered so far in life. The love between Henry and Clare is the same as any other people; it is the way they go about it that is so different. Henry can travel through time. He cannot control it but is aware of some things that trigger it. When he travels he usually goes to the past and to points of emotional significance. He describes it as kind of like emotional gravity. And so, he frequently visits his wife in the past while she is growing up. This situation of course leads to many interesting encounters and begs many, many questions. The author deals with many inquires and problems that are associated with time travel through out the book. She actually does this in such a fantastic way that this is one of those awesome works of fiction that I find myself believing. Structurally it is organized very well and keeps the reader from too much confusion that can be caused by two Henrys in one place! Also, it is easy to tell the author is a reader, there are many fun references to books and music that make the characters so alive. All in all I do not wish to speak too much on the plot except for it being a love story. It is a fantastic read and I would rather not spoil it for you. It is not too difficult but entirely engaging. This is the first book in a long time that made me cry, and I am going to read it now for a second time! Other Amazon quick-pick recommendations: THE LOSERS CLUB by Richard Perez, [e-mail] by Tom Grimes

Rating:
Summary: An awesome read!
Review: I had heard some good things about this book so I decided to pre-order it when it came out in paperback. As soon as I started reading, I couldn't put it down. The characters are so engaging and interesting. At the end of the story, you feel as if you have known them your whole life. Henry DeTamble has Chrono-Displacement Disorder and can travel through time. He meets his wife when she is 6 and he is in his 30s. Even through all his time traveling, he and his wife are able to stay together. I think this particular book is a good study in human nature, in how people think and act and especially love overcoming all. I highly recommend it!

Rating:
Summary: Engrossing
Review: This book covers practically the entire lives of its main characters, Henry and Clare. Henry suffers from "Chrono-Displacement Disorder", so from the age of five on, he jumps randomly back and forth in time. His jumps seem to center around a few locations or catastrophic emotional events. In a large number of jumps, he ends up in the meadow outside of Clare Abshire's house. So, Clare knows and loves an older Henry, whom she has known since she was six. But in Henry's timeline, he does not meet Clare until she is twenty. Confused? Sometimes it is, but also very compelling and hard to put down. If my husband had not forced me to go to bed, I would have read this in one sitting.

Rating:
Summary: Creative, compelling story that makes you think
Review: Time travel is overused as a plot device, so I was skeptical when I picked up this book. However, the characters are so clearly drawn, you can't help but be pulled in. Yes, there are moments when you must suspend disbelief (this is a genetic disorder...?), but the clarity of the scenes and the emotional realism make you more than willing to do so.
At its root, this story is about love, and the connection between soulmates. However, it also shows that everyone has personal demons (time travel being just a stranger demon than most), and true intimacy means knowing and accepting them. With that acceptance grounding him, Henry can soar like Clare's birds. The story also makes you question your awareness of the people around you. At one point a character says "You're not ready to see me yet". How many of us are looking at the people we know, and really seeing them?
Finishing this book, I was bereft. It ended perfectly, and I knew it was coming, but I still felt like I had lost a close friend. Bravo on a wonderful story - can't wait to see what Ms Niffenegger does next!

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Summary: Totally Unique
Review: Traveling against the grain, Audrey Niffenegger creates a romance more original and imaginative than I could imagine. It has that same uniqueness that seems beyond comparison that books like 'The Da Vinci Code' and 'My Fractured Life' have that seem to just captivate. It is hard to describe 'The Time Traveler's Wife'. It's not just a romance. It's not just science fiction. It's not just drama. It's in that league of uniqueness that you just have to read it to understand.

Rating:
Summary: Half perfection, half deeply flawed.
Review: For a first novel Audrey Niffenegger has done a wonderful job of creating a new and interesting perspective on time travel using a love story as the foreground.

The first half of the book was absolutely stupendous. Niffenegger sets up her premise and you get pulled into her world. It was at this point that I thought I would be recommending this book to everyone and buying extra copies for my friends for Christmas.

And then things began to fail to add up or were just disturbing. (Spoiler alert.)

Niffenegger creates certain rules (as required by most sci-fi/fantasy) for her world. Henry, the time traveler, can't really change things, he can only really observe. Then, when the plot requires it and Clare needs more space in their house, he wins the lottery. This brings out several problems. One, if he can do that, why can't he do other things? Two, if he can be rich, why can't he affect things outside of his life such as people who are destitute, charities or political causes? And why don't these issues even come up - does he even care? And three, the lottery is brought up and then . . . forgotten.

This pattern occurs again when Henry seeks medical attention. We're drawn in as he convinces his doctor (who smokes in his office - give me a break!) to treat him and study his DNA. And then we have to wait 100+ pages as Niffenegger follows Clare's obsession with having a baby over several years. What's Henry's doctor doing to treat Henry? We don't know because we're not shown.

Both Clare and Henry, in the latter half of the novel, are presented in a rather flawed manner.

Henry is confronted with his own mortality, more so than most humans. But does he discuss it, think about it, reveal the details to his loved ones as he should do? Not really.

Clare on the other hand becomes downright selfish and obsessed in the second half. She betrays one of her best friends not just once, but twice. There's an annoying scene where she tries to "protect" Alba, her daughter, from medical assistance against Henry's wishes when he so obviously knows what's best far better than she does. And then there's the ending in which we are given nothing about Clare's life after Henry's departure. It's as if her life was nothing without him. She did nothing, accomplished nothing.

The book reminded me at the end of "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte. A compliment of sorts. But like "Heights," "The Time Traveler's Wife" is about an unhealthy expression of love and obsession.

One of the things that felt so odd about the book was it's lack of involvement with the outside world. It seems unlikely that Henry's actions would be so ignored by the government. Wouldn't someone catch on, start investigating, and then want in on the action? Wouldn't Henry's friends be more persistant about getting help, especially about money? Wouldn't both Henry and Clare be interested in helping others with Henry's knowledge? It's as if Clare and Henry are living in their own cocoon because none of these issues are really brought up.

Overall, Niffenegger makes the mistake of having "idiot plot" devices control her story. Why is something there? It's there because the plot demands it, not because it fits with the characters or the real story.

All of this is such a shame given the book's first half which just glowed with promise. Despite all these criticisms, it's still a good read. It's just not going to be a classic.

Rating:
Summary: **Alas, There Can Be No Sequel To This Great Story!**
Review: This exceptional book is a timeless love story. Pun intended, it is also one of the best, modern American love stories written in many years. That is quite a statement, considering the author is a first-time novelist known for her visual artistry. Writer Audrey Niffeneggar uses all her artistic knowledge, experiences around Chicago-land, and understanding of people in love, to bring a truly unique work to life.

At first I thought I was just reading science fiction. Though this book might reside in that section of the library, it really demonstrates so much more. The story is told entirely through the two main characters, Henry the Time Traveler, and Claire the Time Traveler's Wife. The growth and development of the two characters is done with tremendous maturity, far beyond the scope of most writers, let alone publishing virgins. I cared so much for these two lovers that I could hardly hold back the tears the closer I got to the end of the book.

Claire's story is mostly told in chronological order, like most of us normal people are used to. Henry's story is told in a jumble of chronological sequences, much as you might expect from someone not constrained to the normal human space-time continuum. The manner in which Author Niffenneggar weaves the two together is well thought-out and brilliantly presented. She doesn't try to dazzle us with Star Trek level science facts, and presents the critical, but minor, science fiction premise of this work as almost matter-a-fact. This makes the book highly enjoyable for readers of all flavors.

As with all life, the story must end with death. Therefore, this work is accurately described as a stunningly beautiful tragedy. But the picture that is painted of the lives of these characters, so drastically in love, is breathtaking and heartwarming, well worth the tears that come as that final, fatal moment reaches us. I rate this book most accurately at 4.80 out of 5.00 stars. I heard recently that Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt have purchased the movie rights to this novel. I cannot think of anything that could improve this story except the thought of those two actors bringing to life these wonderful characters on the big screen. Very highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Examining a lifetime of a relationship together
Review: The writing of Audrey Niffenegger is reminiscent of Vladimir Nabokov's. As I was reading "The Time Traveler's Wife", I was strongly reminded of "Ada." In "Ada", Nabokov takes an Eden-like idyll of adolescent sex and love and projects it through the lifetime of the couple, who grow, mature and travel in and out of the relationship with each other, but never regaining the lost sense of a childhood ideal. In "The Time Traveller's Wife" we see a relationship from all sides, but out of sequence. This is brilliant. Events occur and THEN are foreshadowed, with the foreshadowing throwing insight rather than prescience onto the picture.

The plot is laid out rather simply: right in the beginning, we learn that Henry DeTamble is suffering a genetic disorder that makes him shift through time. Amusingly, when Henry shifts in time, only his body moves; clothes, even dental fillings stay behind. His existence is colored by the fact that, any moment, he knows he will disappear and reappear sometime and somewhere else, buck naked and possibly in danger. For this reason, he keeps in top running form. He never knows when he'll have to make a dash for it. Throughout his time shifting, he is entwined with Clare, first as a child, then as an adult. Their relationship goes from a backwards-Lolita type infatuation (Henry is waiting for Clare to grow up, because he knows they will fall deeply in love, he is not lusting for an underage nymphette as in Nabokov's novel.)

The novel shifts in time and in viewpoint rather neatly, first from Clare's point of view as the stable, time-fixed partner, then to Henry. The thread of the entire novel is about love, the kind of love that never changes, never dies, just grows infinitely despite the ravages of time and events that change us. This is an interesting treatment of the question "Why do we change and why does love change?"

This is a very ambitious first novel and one that is crafted with amazing creativity and care. The character of Henry is so well-developed, I at first thought the author must also be a man. I had to check the back cover (after I had compulsively read the book in one go, cover to cover) and see that the author was really a woman and her picture was amazingly as she had described Clare to look like. Yet Henry is as believable as a man as Clare is as a woman.

This is really not a science fiction novel; rather it's literature about love and relationships and time. It's a fine novel and I look forward to more from this marvelous artist.

Rating:
Summary: I agree with the person who said "boring"
Review: I really wanted to like "The Time Traveler's Wife", but just couldn't get into it. I give the book 2 stars(as opposed to one)because the plot idea is different.
It took me a while to get used to the time skipping and Henry being different ages. Also two Henrys in the same scene(especially the 15 year old Henrys......that made no sense what was implied they were doing together!) bothered me.
I would have stuck with it, tried to go with the flow of the book, but it was not holding my interest. The conversations Henry was having with Clare were dull. zzzzzzzz The story did not seem to be going anywhere, so, sorry to say, it was put aside and I started reading something else.