The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Imaginative writing
The ideas behind the book, and the way that the reader is propelled into events that seem to be both happening in sequence and totally disjoint, is ingenious. At first, I was wondering where the whole story was heading, but, by about three-quarters of the way through the book, it is fairly obvious how it will end. However, that didn’t make me want to stop reading. Quite the contrary: I couldn’t stop!
Initially, all the time jumps are a bit confusing, but the start of every chapter is labelled with the date and the ages of the main characters: Clare and Henry. Sometimes, Henry has two ages, as he meets himself coming back; or forward. Don’t worry though, you soon get used to the structure, and it flows incredibly well.
Although the book is entitled The Time Traveler’s Wife, it was much more about Henry, the time traveller, than about his wife, Clare, whose character was much less developed. One other aspect of the book, which sometimes irritated me was that it was often too high-brow. Perhaps it is me who is too low-brow! And my final little gripe is that there were too many lists. These can be skipped: once you get used to them, you can see them coming.
The enduring thought that I was left with was, “If I could travel in time, where and when would I go?” How would you answer that one?
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