Bookclub Book Review: The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

I absolutely loved this book when I read it three years ago. I picked it up when I was doing a good bit of traveling, having read a review and thinking that it was either going to be a very good book or a very dorky book…it was definitely the former.

The premis of the book revolves around Henry who has a genetic mutation which causes him to spontaneously travel backward or forward in time—the main catch being that when he travels, he arrives naked. This is the part of the review that when I read it, I thought—now that sounds dorky. But it’s such a pivotal fact of Henry’s life, that he has to train extensively so that he’s not arrested for public indecency. He never knows how long he’ll be somewhere and he has no control over when and where it happens.

To make the story even more interesting, a love story is added between Henry and Clare. When Henry and Clare first meet, Claire is a young girl and Henry is a middle-aged man. In “real time” they are only a few years apart, however, but Clare’s experience of their love life together is very different than Henry’s, having met him and gotten to know him long before he does her.

The narrative format is what makes the books for me, though. It is not linear and is told in alternating points of view, so we get both Henry’s and Clare’s perspective on the developing relationships. Even though the story is disjointed it moves along and progresses so that you see the love story, the development of the characters, and the agonies they endure in trying to live with this disability, if you will. It’s also a narrative that bested me at my own game. I usually read ahead a few pages when I’m finished with my reading session to keep me interested and also to give me some relief in very tight narrative spots. There was no relief of that kind while reading this book because the disjointed narrative just opened up new nodes of the story that I wasn’t prepared for. So, there were many restless nights and days when I couldn’t wait to get back to this novel.

I truly hope that Niffenegger has another novel in her. I so thoroughly enjoyed this book, and am excited that my bookclub read it because I’ll be able to talk to several of my friends about it.