Review: The Time Travelers Wife

Considering I had an entire day to myself upon returning home from my trip (and Katie talking about how great the ending of the book was) I decided to set myself down and finish The Time Travelers Wife.

Other than reading some books for school (by the way, got a B+ in my Comm class this summer. Not too shabby.), I don’t get a chance to read too much outside of my staple Star Wars books and (recently) some old school sci-fi and biographies.

So when I was on Pajiba and they recommended this book, I asked around and found out that Eric and Annie had a copy and they loved it (and they graciously lent it to me during my holidays).

The story revolves around Henry who is a time traveler. But not in the Delorean type of way, but in a way where he has a genetic disorder which can have him time travel at a given moment (usually when he gets stressed out over something) and then he shows up in another time, naked (clothing can’t go through time, you didn’t know that?!). So he has to deal with the consequences of this random time traveling – sometimes he has to steal clothes and money, sometimes he gets into fights because of this, etc.

Meanwhile, the entire book is really a love story as he meets Clare at six years old, but he has to form a relationship with her at this age as she will become his wife in the future. So, imagine yourself meeting your partner when they are six, and you are forty and you have to form a relationship with them. Meanwhile, you time travel on a moment’s notice so you don’t really control this thing.

In the end, the story jumps between the present-day Clare/Henry – where Clare actually meets Henry in present time and tells him how he travels back in time to meet her and then it jumps back and forwards in time to show us their meetings.

The characters are charismatic and believable. I felt that I could relate to a lot of the characters – whether it be their everyday mannerisms, or the crazy conversations about nothing they would have. The writing is uber-modern…it felt strange reading a modern book as it was explicit in language as well as descriptions of their sexual acts in some parts of the book. This is why I would have to put the caveat that I don’t know if Nanny would care for this book.

What can I say about the book on a whole? It blew me away. I was engrossed in this like I am with a Harry Potter novel (yes, yes, I do enjoy a good Harry Potter book). At some points in my vacation I just wanted to pull the car over to keep reading. The relationship of Henry and Clare grew together in an awkward way (which happens when one of you time travel) but the love they had…heck, I’ll admit it. I’m a romantic at heart so this story hit me. It was an amazing story of their good times, their bad, the craziness surrounding time travel…well written novel and the references of the time periods (the music at the time, the restaurants in the Chicago area, BEAUTIFUL!) made this novel exceptional.

Watch out for the film with Rachel McAdams coming sometime next year.

Highly recommended. Really, it is.