Imagine knowing your death date and not being able to do anything about it, for some it might be a blessing and for some a curse.

Imagine meeting your husband when you’re six, only that he’s 36, but in your “present” he’s 14 and doesn’t even know you exist.
The story is about Henry DeTamble is a time traveler, the next evolution of humans, only that he can’t control where or when he’s going – and he can’t take anything with him and that includes clothes and even tooth fillings but he does return with the bruises and injuries he has incurred. Henry, more than often, has to rely on his criminal skills (such as pick pocketing, lock picking, etc.) and, in a Dickensian twist of circular fate, even teaches his young self those same skills.
On many of his trips Henry visits young Clare, his future wife, and accompanies her during her difficult teenage years until they meet in the present – where she knows the future, but he doesn’t know their past.
Even though this book is classified as “science fiction”, it is a far cry from imagined space adventures, alternate universes or fantastical adventures. The author has made time-traveling, its positives and negatives, part of the narrative and eventually the reader learns to accept this unique quality in Henry for what is, a blessing and a curse.
As are most things in life.

The main timeline is mostly told from Clare’s perspective, and hence straightforward. The narrative itself is told in first-person from both Clare and Henry and sometimes from two Henrys as he meets himself in the past or future.

This book is a very unique love story, since it follows Clare & Henry’s relationship their whole life, with a twist of course. Once I learned how to follow the story (you must pay close attention to the section headings which tell the dates and ages of the characters), I couldn’t put this book down.
Even though the book has some flaws (mainly that there is a character introduced early on and then just “appears” again without a re-introduction) I still enjoyed it tremendously and do highly recommend it. ( )

I finished this book two days ago and I still feel consumed by these characters. Time Traveler is an incredibly intense love story that continues to yank at my heart-strings. Kudos to Niffenegger who weaves together an intricate and delicate plot and delivers it with such ardor. ( )

Henry and Clare are the most unlikeable people I've read about in a long while, amalgams of Look at This Fucking Hipster and Stuff White People Like. Everyone is rich and loves name-dropping artists and musicians everywhere. (There's seriously a scene where the 'real' punk Henry schools the 'baby' punks on good punk music, FFS.)

The Time Traveler's Wife is undeniably racist. Despite taking place in Chicago, there's almost no ethnic diversity, and the only real minority characters are Clare's family's housekeeper and Henry's father's landlord - respectively a Mammy figure and an Asian immigrant with bad English taken wholesale from nasty ethnic stereotypes. Don't worry - although they're marginalized, they still possess the unique wisdoms that only an ethnic Other can have in stories.

Despite that the book is written as a romance, the relationship between Henry and Clare is never well fleshed out beyond their shared pop culture interests. The early parts of the book, where a middle-aged Henry is spending time with a pre-teen Clare, with his knowledge that she is/will be his wife, felt uncomfortably pedophilic at times. And because of the age differential, and the fact that Henry works through much of his life backwards, the reader never sees them fall in love. They've just kind of been in love their entire lives, so the book reads like one of those romances where the couple is in a loving little bubble separated from the rest of the world and its happenings. Loathsome characters, with a sci-fi twist not executed well enough to keep any of it entertaining rather than exasperating ( )

Many people loved this book, so I thought I'd also give it a shot. This book was just a waste of my time, the story left me cold. ( )

This was a book that I waited a while before I read it. My mother and wife had already read it and were fairly so -so about it. At first I thought it was a nice charming book, but nothing else. however, as I got deeper into the story I became more involved in the lives of Genry and Clare and read the last 300 odd pages in a day or so. The ending was mixed, so of it a littel contrived, some full of hope and love. All in all, a great read, worth the waut. ( )