I love a good time travel story and if it happens to have a good love story as well, all the better. Luckily, “The Time Traveler’s Wife” is great on both counts. Here’s what Publisher’s Weekly said about it on Amazon. By the way DO NOT read the original article. They put spoilers in the review that would have taken some of the more pleasant surprises of the novel away from me. I omitted those surprises this review spoils.
From Publishers Weekly
This highly original first novel won the largest advance San Francisco-based MacAdam/Cage had ever paid, and it was money well spent. Niffenegger has written a soaring love story illuminated by dozens of finely observed details and scenes, and one that skates nimbly around a huge conundrum at the heart of the book: Henry De Tamble, a rather dashing librarian at the famous Newberry Library in Chicago, finds himself unavoidably whisked around in time. He disappears from a scene in, say, 1998 to find himself suddenly, usually without his clothes, which mysteriously disappear in transit, at an entirely different place 10 years earlier-or later. During one of these migrations, he drops in on beautiful teenage Clare Abshire, an heiress in a large house on the nearby Michigan peninsula, and a lifelong passion is born. The problem is that while Henry’s age darts back and forth according to his location in time, Clare’s moves forward in the normal manner, so the pair are often out of sync. But such is the author’s tenderness with the characters, and the determinedly ungimmicky way in which she writes of their predicament (only once do they make use of Henry’s foreknowledge of events to make money, and then it seems to Clare like cheating) that the book is much more love story than fantasy. It also has a splendidly drawn cast, from Henry’s violinist father, ruined by the loss of his wife in an accident from (omited because it’s a spoiler), to Clare’s odd family and a multitude of Chicago bohemian friends. (REALLY BIG SPOILER HERE that I omited) Henry’s foreordained end is agonizing, but Niffenegger has another card up her sleeve, and plays it with poignant grace. It is a fair tribute to her skill and sensibility to say that the book leaves a reader with an impression of life’s riches and strangeness rather than of easy thrills.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
I do want to offer a caution to some of the people who might be offended by sexual content in their books. There’s quite a fair number of steamy scenes that might offend some readers but they are easy to skip over. Just thought I’d throw a warning out there. Not a dealbreaker for me and one of the more pleasant surprises in my reading life. Buy this if you’re waiting for your author’s next book. You might just find another author whose next novel you look forward to reading. I know I have.
Chris W
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