The Time Traveler's Wife

I did not expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. When i first read about the book and the story concept, I thought it would be confusing to follow the characters back and forth through time. Not at all. I completely came to enjoy and love Henry and appreciate the "gifts" he gave Clare throughout their life. The book never got dull, and I felt their loss towards the end as if it were my own. Recommend this book highly, and if your new to time travel, get the best of the best -- the Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon, they will truly capture your heart.

In 1969 a novel by Kurt Vonnegut was published in which Billy Pilgrim had come unstuck in time. In "Slaughterhouse-Five" Billy wandered willy nilly to the past and future, met philosophical aliens, fell in love, and along the way witnessed the fire bombing of Dresden during World War II. Now in "The Time Traveler's Wife" Billy is back, reincarnated in the character of Henry DeTamble. But Henry has little in common with Billy Pilgrim aside from his chronologic unstuckedness, for the author's concerns are very different from those of Vonnegut. While Vonnegut focused his ironic scrutiny on the foibles of humanity in general, Niffenegger's gaze is turned inward, toward (shall I say it?) the tangled mysteries of the human heart. There, I said it. So sue me.
You might say the "The Time Traveler's Wife" is a love story with a time traveling twist; or a time travel story with a romantic twist. Both are true, and neither - and this is what makes it difficult to categorize. Is it a science fiction story? That depends on how exacting your definition of SF is. Look at it this way: If you were to strip away the time-traveling element, the tale simply wouldn't work; it would collapses without the support of its framework. Take away the love story, and there's no story. All that's left is a hapless guy unstuck in time with nothing meaningful to do.
Now the particulars. Clare Abshire is eight years old when she first meets Henry as he appears naked in her meadow. Henry is 28 when he first meets Clare in a library, both fully clothed this time. At this library meeting Henry doesn't know Clare from Adam's cat, yet Clare has known Henry since she was eight, and has always loved him. For Henry, it's not quite love at first sight, but close enough. Thus begins the strangest, most convoluted love story I can recall reading, or seeing in the movies.
Henry has no control over when or where he goes. Think of it as a bizarre form of epilepsy, with which it shares certain symptoms. Henry may be contentedly reading a book, begins to feel light headed and nauseous, and suddenly finds himself naked in the middle of February, in the middle of the night, sprawled in eight inches of snow on a sidewalk in downtown Chicago. This is the reason Henry runs to stay in shape. He depends on his feet to keep him ahead of whomever may find him naked in their back yard or cornfield. He has taught himself to pick locks, to steal clothes and shoes, to pilfer food. For Henry it's all a matter of survival.
Clare compares herself to a sailor's wife who scans the horizon for the return of her her wayward Odysseus. She never knows when Henry will leave or how long he will be gone. Sometimes he is gone for minutes, sometimes an entire day. All that's left of him are his clothes where they collapsed on the floor. All she can do is worry, and go about her business of making art.
No synopsis can prepare the reader for the twists and turns the story takes. Speaking for myself, it grabbed me and wouldn't let me go until the last page was turned. It may be a romance, a love story, yet Audrey Niffenegger pulls no punches here. She is brutally realistic in her unfolding of the implications of her premise. "The Time Traveler's Wife" is populated by characters the reader cares about, all carefully drawn by the subtle hand of the artist. I haven't found any information about the author, but I would be surprised if this were a first novel. It is too complete for that, too deft, and too carefully plotted. The dialogue is often clever, yet has the undeniable ring of authenticity. The plot flows naturally and unforced from the premise, and from the heartfelt desires of its characters(...)
Author Audrey Niffenegger owes only one thing to Vonnegut: a basic premise. The rest is hers alone.