I adored this book, even while surfacing occasionally to go – wait a minute, he's a creep!

I had heard about this book, but had never really considered reading it until I came upon two friends discussing it: one ranks it as her favorite book while the other was returning the book after trying, and failing, to get through it after three attempts over the course of a year. I ended up borrowing it, and I am so glad that I did. I thought it was a fascinating love story. Henry and Clare meet when he is 28, but she has known and loved him since she was 6 and he was 36. Because Henry is cursed with being a time traveler, his future is her past. When she is a child he is burdened with the responsibility of knowing too much about her and their relationship; when they meet in the present she now carries that burden. How do you plan a future with a man who keeps disappearing? How do you live when your life consists of being dragged against your will through time to be left naked and vulnerable and alone? How can your love stay connected when time is both enemy and friend? I thought this was an inventive, poignant story. I certainly had some quibbles with the story (I have never heard a woman use the c--- word; it was jarring when Clare used it in such a matter of fact manner) and wasn't particularly interested in Clare's art or the world of punk rock, but their love story more than made up for those areas that dragged for me. I would definitely recommend it. ( )

this story was so unusual i really enjoyed it ( )

Brilliant. Love story. Clare and Henry meet when Clare is 6 and Henty is 36 ... and then unravels in curved time. ( )

As predicted by friends who have read the book, it was difficult to follow at first, but then I got into the format. Of course you do begin to question some of the encounters and I still want to know whether the lottery ticket got cashed in. I enjoyed reading the book and would recommend it. ( )

henry has a genetic disorder. he keeps being transportet into other times, he is a time traveler.
he meets his wife, travelling to the past, when she is just a little girl. he keeps visiting her until she's eighteen. after that the visits stop. she has to wait for a few years until she meets his contemporary self, by faith/accident. she allready loves him. he hasn't met her yet.

it's a sad romantic tale with some interesting implications on fait, choise, causality and time consistency.
but it is definitely too long. it looses all its drive and power when they start trying to have a baby. i especially did not like the end. i didn't think it matched the characters and especially, the kind of causality time travell invoked in the book. ( )

Just finished "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger (a book, not a movie). I don't know if I will go & see the movie as I would regret spoiling a beautiful experience. The book is a wonderful celebration of love, life & loss- recommended.

This book is depressing. Imaginitive, yes. But everytime I think about this book, I honestly wish I hadn't read it. ( )

I really enjoyed this book. It was a great mix of sci-fi fantasy type time travel, and sensitive love story. The details and fun of the time travel were believable and interesting, while being well tied together by the romance. The characters had real depth, even though they sometimes seemed a bit caricature-ish... punk loving librarian? But you definitely come to care about them! Well written and fun! ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it was captivating, absorbing and refreshingly different. A romance with a very significant twist. The plot was very cleverly thought through and kept the reader intrigued from start to finish. I loved the way the story criss crossed through time. ( )

Oh. My. God.

That was my first thought when I finally closed this book. This is one of the best works of recent adult fiction I have read. And while I may have slight objections or questions to parts, it is, as a whole, one of the best books of the decade (I say that having not read even close to most of the books written this decade - forgive me).

Audrey Niffenegger tells the love story between a man and a woman, Henry and Clare. This would be nothing new or exciting if it didn't have one key element: Henry is a time traveler. He will disappear at random and end up in a completely different place in a completely different time. This is how he meets Clare, when she is six years old and he is 36. Throughout Clare's childhood Henry is somewhat of a mythical creature. Always appearing, but never giving her details as to when he comes from or their future together. When she meets him in the present, he is only eight years older than her, and they begin their all-consuming love affair, accompanied by moments of anguish when they are separated by Henry's time traveling (which Niffenegger explains as a genetic disorder). Throughout, Henry is searching for a way to stop time traveling, to be kept firmly in the present with the ones he loves. But is that possible?

Niffenegger created a believable world with very human characters. I felt for Clare when she had no idea where Henry had gone or when he would be back. I felt for Henry when he was transported to unknown times and places, often finding himself in danger. And I felt for them both when they weren't sure if they would be able to have a baby due to Henry's genes. There is depth to the characters and, because of that, the originality of the story, and the flow of the writing, I am counting this among one of my favorite books.

5 out of 5 stars. This is a story I could read again and again, and it has made me appreciate what I have. Contemporary fiction rarely brings out such true, raw emotion, and I applaud Audrey Niffenegger and look forward to reading her second novel, Her Fearful Symmetry. ( )

I'm ashamed that I still find this book so good and totally devastating. Creepy nod to Nabokov though ... -- Ms. Lopez-Gerlach

* NO SPOILERS WERE USED IN THE WRITING OF THIS REVIEW *

For me, the intellectual difference between watching a film and reading a book is that books can offer deeper insight into a story through language's rhythms and analogies; books often have the ability to be more mentally stimulating than films.

I specifically read books that will challenge my mind, and avoid one-dimensional writing that seems to narrate visual stories without offering linguistic depth.

This is where "The Time Traveler's Wife" disappointed - it reads like watching a movie.

Yes, the ending made me cry, but simply eliciting tears does not make a book great in my opinion - a story can be sappy and corny, and still make me cry. Unfortunately, there were no "a-ha!" moments here, not a single insight that stuck with me. This is junk food for the bookworm's soul, as far as I'm concerned. And while I'm at it, let me add a huge CHICK-LIT Alert!

One of the rare cases in which the movie is sure to be better than the book.
Read as a screenplay, however, it is brilliant! ( )

I finished this book today and have not been able to stop thinking about it. The ending was so touching and emotional. I cannot remember the last time a book moved me to tears but this did, I was sobbing.
It took a little time to get into the story and the time travel appeared a little too unbelievable but the story soon wrapped itself around me. This is the best love story I have read for years and makes you appreciate the people yoou love in life. Hold them close and show your love everyday.

This book was very disappointing for me, especially because it was highly recommended. I have to agree with one of the other reviewers in calling Niffenegger's writing self-indulgent. The theme of punk rock wore thin quickly, as it always seems to in any form. The characters who defined themselves by their affinity for the music and the city of Chicago quickly felt both elitist and one-dimensional to me. It came off more as caricature rather than real character development. Sure, the Aragon is an aging landmark, and a variety of cuisines are available at a moment's notice... but what does that mean, other than "aren't these characters cool and complex?"
I will definitely be passing on any other books by this author. ( )

The flat and stereotyped characters made me cringe all the way through. Being in an extraordinary position does not make characters less flat. I furthermore get annoyed by the authorial voice and agree on this with acl who wrote: "Seems much more convinced of its own literary significance than I ever was".

I managed to finish it only by thinking it might still become worthwhile and because there were no other books around. ( )

I found this book to be really boring and had to force myself to read it for book club. ( )

It is extremely rare for me to get emotionally attached to fictional characters. As much as I enjoy reading, it's more a pastime than a driving need to dive back into the tale. Not so with this book. I adored the characters. I was entranced by Clare and Henry's relationship, and fascinated by Henry's genetic disorder that causes him to travel through time without any control over when or where he ends up. I cried - no, sobbed - at certain moments with a depth of feeling I haven't had for fiction in a very, very long time. I highly recommend this book. ( )

The Time Traveler’s Wife is all at once hopeful and joyous and sad and suspenseful and a million other adjectives that run the gamut of emotion! I thoroughly enjoyed Niffennegger’s first novel, being somewhat a late discoverer, as it seems. I saw this a couple of years ago on one of those “…if you liked this book” for something sci-fi that I was reading at the time, and filed it away on the wish list to be forgotten. I decided to pick up a copy seeing it come back around in a movie tie-in reprint and I was blown away.

Niffennegger has a knack for transferring emotions though her words straight to your own personal soft spot. I found myself constantly grinning like an idiot, or overwhelmed with joy, or equally feeling the lows and despair of Henry, the time traveler, and his wife Clare. This is one of those rare gems that excites you, makes you appreciate life, gives you some real insight, while entertaining you along the way.

My only criticism of this work is the way in which it deals with the science, or rather doesn’t deal with it. Having said that, if you accept the premise that Niffenegger is laying out there, it isn’t necessary to critique the lack of discussion on paradoxes or cause and effect, and doesn’t take anything away from the touching story of two soul mates reaching out to stay connected. To me, the most endearing moments are those when it is a first for only one of them, for example: Henry is already married to Clare when he appears in the past and she meets him for the first time at age 6. Likewise, Clare has spent 16 years seeing a future Henry off and on before he first meets her in his timeline. These moments make you really feel the characters welling up of emotion so vividly, it is almost palpable.

I would recommend The Time Traveler’s Wife to any and everyone! It will make you laugh and cry, and smile, and as in my case, maybe even make you feel more connected to your own soul mate. ( )

I had to come home so I wanted a book to read on the train. I went to Janpath, an got this one from a little street bookshop. When I had set out to acquire a book, I had planned to buy both this one and AS Byatt's Possession, so when I got out of this little shop, I went up Janpath, and crossed over and walked down the road, and on a whim, went inside Cafe Coffee Day.

And this is a book you should read alone in a coffee shop, a plate of Chocolate Truffle in front of you. And as you tuck in the rich chocolate, and look forward to going home, you can savour dialouge such as*

I gave her my heart to keep, in case I lose it again.

Home is where my heart is. But my heart is here. I am home

If books had flavours, this one would be chocolate truffle, rich, chocolatey, comforting. Not like being home, which is somewhere between mildly boring and extremely annoying, but like coming home. Like first love, like memories of childhood, not like happiness, but like the promise of happiness, like a lovely dream which breaks your heart when you wake up.

But holding an actual book in your hand, the coarse pages of good quality recyclable paper, and the way they smell, sitting in an empty coffeeshop, walking down the road, lost to the world, in dreams which are both too silly and too pretty, being a teenaged girl again... there are times when you can believe in the dreams of your childhood, and there are times which are simply the best time you ever had.

And no, I won't recommend this, or mine, teenaged imagination to anyone, but this is the book I will end up writing if I was a writer. Because I too am unable to see the ugliness of suffering, the boringness of waiting. I too am young enough to believe that someone will wait from the age of 36 to 82, for one glimpse of her first love. Well I would like to believe that last one, I really would.

And this is the last illusion left, I still believe in true love. And the day I get married, I will have to give up o it, and then I will have nothing left to believe, nothing at all. ( )

This is one of those books that people told me "you will love this book" —from years of experience I know that hyping a book to me means that I am overly critical when I come to read it. So I put them to one side as a "maybe one day" and read them with some preconceived idea of what they are about.

So I finally got around to reading The Time Traveler's Wife which I thought of as a romance; a love story where the couple's relationship develops as a result of Henry (as an adult) meeting Clare (who is a child) and recognising her as his future wife. Now this sounded like it might be an uncomfortable read and in some ways it was but not in the way I expected.

This is a beautifully written novel. I never got lost in the convoluted time-lines and the story progresses in a way that feels real and possible. The genetic quirk that makes Henry a time traveller is actually believable; his desire to live a life as normal possible (given this condition) is understandable and the way Henry and Clare's relationship unfolds is a not just a romance.

Am I going to regret not reading this sooner? The short answer is no I am just glad that I finally did read it. ( )

I read this book a few years ago and loved it. Since then, I've gifted it to many friends and sold it to several customers (bookseller by trade). Revisiting was risky, but it certainly didn't let me down. A beautiful love story combined with a novel framework - this is one that I'll be reading over and over again. ( )

This is one of my favorites and will be on my keeper shelf. The ending broke my heart! ( )

Didn't like this book at all. I read this on the outstanding reccomendation of an Aunt and was very very disappointed! The plot was dull and lifeless, the repitition of Henry's time travelling was confusing and took away from the books only interesting aspect which was the love story between the two. I would not recommend this book or her latest book " Her fearful symmetry' for that matter. ( )

Unique! I suffered for months trying to get past the start of this book. I just did not find it "moving" enough in the beginning. Yet I picked it back up and I am so very glad that I did. It was a different book and left me feeling that way as well. I won't give anything away except to say it is a modern day time travel story. Others that say so many bad things happen to them, well yes, it seems that way at times but he was borm with a disease of sorts. It is a good read. ( )