NUMBER: 5TITLE: The Time Traveler's Wife
AUTHOR: Audrey Niffenegger
STARTED: January 14, 2005
FINISHED: January 22, 2005
PAGES: 546
GENRE: Fiction
FIRST SENTENCE: Clare: The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble.
SUMMARY: [From barnesandnoble.com] A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger's cinematic storytelling that makes the novel's unconventional chronology so vibrantly triumphant.
REASON FOR READING: I've heard so many positive things about the story, how could I not?
THOUGHTS: I decided to read this book because every online reading group I'm on has raved. I saw it at Barnes & Noble and it was on sale. Add in my membership discount and you've got yourself a deal.
To be honest, I was disappointed. I thought it was a good book, but I think all of the positive recommendations ruined it for me. I was expecting to read the story of my life. I was prepared to read the best book ever written. My standards were too high.
The story was inventive. I liked the way the plot was chronological while still bouncing back and forth. It's very difficult to write a story like that and still keep the reader feeling coherent. I never once lost track of the story. In fact, I liked how each present/past change over highlighted different aspects of the story.
The characters were amazing as well. Henry and Clare were actually believable. Toward the end, I felt Henry's anguish and fear. I danced in high school (in many ways I'm still a dancer). If I went through what he went through, I would feel utterly devastated. Clare, while she bothered me sometimes, was the best character in the book. She understood her mission. In some ways I feel as if she was the rock, the focal point of the whole story.
At the end, the author actually had me on the verge of tears but I couldn't actually cry. I was still expecting... something.
The book had all of that, but there was still something missing. I have yet to figure out what it is. I could, and will, recommend this book to my friends, but I won't hype it. I think this is a book that should be read on the basis of desire alone. Readers should not go in expecting anything. They need to be a blank slate.
I think the story may improve on a re-read at a later date.
MISCELLANEOUS: I get to discuss this book in an online group soon. Lucky for me I've actually read this month's book.
KEEP/SHARE/CRINGE(?): Keep
RATING: 8/10 [Terrific]
CR: Double Standards by Judith McKnaught
RN: Have not yet thought that far ahead.
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