The Time Traveler's Wife

I just finished reading The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. The book is a combination of romance and science fiction. Although romance has never been a favorite genre of mine, I really enjoyed it. In the book Henry, one of our leading characters, is a time traveler. He has no control over when and where he time travels to, which is amusing because he suddenly disappears in inconvenient times leaving only a pile of the clothes he was wearing and a tooth filling behind. Henry visits his wife, Clare’s, past. They meet when she is six and Henry is thirty six. These encounters run throughout the whole story. Seeing the couple together as adults is nice, but it’s even more touching to see grown-up Henry interact with his adolescent wife. I started this book ages ago, but stopped reading because it was hard to get into. The concept of time travel is always guilty of making minds spin. I was only forty pages into the book and I already had a headache. About a week ago, I decided to try again. This round went much better. I couldn't put the book down and was really upset when a bottle of root beer leaked in my bag and managed to stay off everything, except this book. I wouldn't have minded so much if it wasn't any good. The point of view switches between Henry and his wife Clare and you always are wondering what's going through the other person's mind (I mean this in a very good way; books are more entertaining when you don't quite understand everything that's going on). The book is also not in chronological order. It goes back and forth over decades within a few pages. You get to see both Henry and Clare as small children and with grey hair. This can get confusing, but it also is a fun twist on what some would call “a sappy love story.” The Time Traveler's Wife is more for the romance fans than science fiction and is clearly targeted at the female population. It's not my favorite story of all time, but I'd definitely recommend it to anybody looking for something new to read. If you do decide to try this book, try not to get hung up on the time travel thing. Just accept it probably won't ever make much sense, and move on to the next page. Thinking about it to hard will only result in a search for something less painful to read. Don't let it stop you at page forty like I did. The book is too good to not finish.

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