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Loading... The Time Traveler's Wife (edition 2004)by Audrey Niffenegger
Work InformationThe Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I read this for the "A Book About Time Travel" part of my 2019 reading challenge. I enjoyed it, but sometimes it was hard to follow the timelines and Henry could be a bit annoying. ( ) I sort of swear off contemporary books (less than 20 years old) as a child. Many were autobiographical fiction and had little structure, assuming their own factual importance. I read this because I did not have any time to find a book for my 3 month trip to Europe and my mom had this lying around. However, since I was trying to find broaden my literary genres and venture into romance, this science fiction blend seemed like a proper compromise. I loved it. There certainly are a few minor structural problems due to the time changes, but it altogether brilliant and original. Too bad more people do not appreciate it. "The Time Traveler's Wife" is one of the most interesting, powerful books I've read in a long time. Audrey Niffenegger did a beautiful job taking some of the most complex ideas - time travel, marriage, love, children, friends, literary and artistic allusions, religion, death, drugs, childhood, growing, loss, and what it means to be human - and weaving them together poetically and with amazing clarity. Her characters are wonderful, "real" people with strengths and flaws, and I really grew to adore them. Despite skipping around time at the same rate as Henry, the time traveler, the events are sequenced in such a way that you still witness each character's growth as a person, as well as discover many surprises along the way. Clare and Henry's story is one of the best love stories I've read in a very long time. This book also echoes important modern-day questions about the appropriateness of gene therapy, and what it means to be a human being. I highly and enthusiastically recommend this book.
The triumph of the book is the triumph of normality, of setting up a decent family life even if you are constantly dissappearing from it, of being loyal to somebody with what Niffenegger finally explains as a genetic dysfunction - chrono-displacement, as she calls it. "The Time Traveler's Wife" can be an exasperating read, but as a love story it has its appeal: Refreshingly, the novel portrays long-term commitment as something lively and exuberant rather than dutiful and staid, evoking both the comforts it brings us and the tribulations we learn to live with. Niffenegger, despite her moving, razor-edged prose, doesn't claim to be a romantic. She writes with the unflinching yet detached clarity of a war correspondent standing at the sidelines of an unfolding battle. She possesses a historian's eye for contextual detail. This is no romantic idyll. About halfway through Audrey Niffenegger's debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, you realize you're going to be devastated. You love the characters, you're deeply involved in their lives, you can sense tragedy coming and you know it's going to hurt. But there's no way you can stop reading... Niffenegger structures the novel clearly enough that the timelines never get tangled, and her writing is so strong you'd keep going even if you did get confused. Belongs to Publisher SeriesFischer Taschenbuch (16390) Is contained inHas the adaptationIs abridged inHas as a reference guide/companionHas as a studyHas as a student's study guideAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Clare and Henry, deeply in love, try desperately to maintain normal lives even though he has been diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder, a condition in which his genetic clock periodically resets, pulling him through time to the past or future. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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