Book Report #114 - The Time Traveler's Wife

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Clare is six years old when she meets her future husband, Henry. He appears to her in the field behind the house as a forty-year old but he can't stay long because he's got to travel back to the present.

Sound confusing? It is.

Clare and Henry develop a friendship and then an intimate relationship in the field where he appears without warning and without clothes (hazards of time travel) until she is 19. They are without each other until they meet in Chicago in the present. He has no recollection of her but she was prepared for that.

This is marketed as a beautiful story of timeless love. I call BS. I don't get why these two were in love. They had great sex and a lot of it but I don't feel that that's enough. The supposedly epic love felt flimsy and frankly, Henry kind of seemed like an asshole.

Good stuff was how lovingly the city of Chicago was portrayed. That kept me reading when the main characters were pissing me off. Also, I was relieved to see someone take on time travel without the possibility of "changing the future." The author adamantly refused to go there and it made all the difference in the credibility of the story.

General consensus: It'll grab you but 500 pages later you'll heave a sigh of relief.