The Time Traveler's Wife (fiction)
Audrey Niffenegger (2003)

THE A5 BOOK REVIEW

The Time Traveler’s Wife is a unique fictional novel by American writer Audrey Niffenegger.  It is a love story between Henry, a handsome and charming librarian, and Clare, an attractive and intelligent artist, complicated by a genetic disorder that causes Henry to randomly and spontaneously be transported to different places in time in his life.  It is a unique and imaginative look on the impacts of time, distance, and uncontrollable circumstances on relationships, both moving and sometimes funny, narrated from both people’s point of view.  The Time Traveler’s Wife is not for everyone; it is easy to get a confused at the beginning by juxtaposition of the time travel, and the characters themselves can be a little polarizing.  But those who do like the book end up loving it for the ending, so be sure to give it a proper chance.  It was Niffenegger’s first book, motivated by challenges with her own relationships, impressively becoming a bestseller.​
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ABOUT AUDREY NIFFENEGGER

Audrey Niffenegger is an American writer and professor at Columbia College in Chicago.  The Time Traveler’s Wife was her debut novel, but she has also published a second novel called Her Fearful Symmetry (2009), a ghost story set in London’s Highgate Cemetery.  That book wasn’t as commercially successful but was more positively praised by critics.  Niffenegger is also an artist; she has published several graphic novels and regularly exhibits. 

GREAT QUOTES:

"Love the world and yourself in it, move through it as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element.” 
- Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

“The compelling thing about making art - or making anything, I suppose - is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances.”
​- Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

INTERESTING LINKS:

  • Read The New Yorker's review in September 2003 on The Time Traveler's Wife.  Or try the Telegraph's review by Helen Brown in 2004. 
  • The book was turned into a movie in 2009 of the same name, starring Rachel McAdams.

THE MOVIE TRAILER