The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Bottom line: this is a fantastic book. Go read it.
Wait, you say, what is it about? What's so good about it? Henry is a time traveler, but unlike any you've heard of before. There's no machine, no device, not even a special power that he accesses. He has Chrono-Displacement Disorder, a genetic condition which whisks him away at importune times and deposits him at various places in past or future. Often he ends up in places with personal significance: his mother's death, his own past, or his wife while she's still a girl.
Niffenegger (isn't that a fun name, by the way?) has thought through the rules of Henry's time travel, but she doesn't bore you with them, either. The book is really a romance about Henry and Clare and the time travel is just an excuse to explore a few very intriguing questions. For instance, what would it be like to meet your spouse as a child? Or to meet a woman for the first time who knows all about you? There are also some questions about causality which Niffenegger handles really well: I think the book is an excellent illustration of the predestination/free will conundrum.
I can only imagine the difficulty in sketching out the timeline of the plot for a storyline so convoluted, but Niffenegger weaves together past and future deftly. Foreshadowing takes on a whole new dimension in this book.
So, I repeat: this is a fantastic book. Go read it.
Fed to jhliu's brain | February 13, 2005
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