A TIME FOR LOVING (The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger)

Member Name: katestuartuk

Product:	The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Date:	05/10/06 (96 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A BEAUTIFUL STORY TOLD WITH GRACE AND STYLE

Disadvantages: YOU WILL BE SAD TO FINISH IT AND WILL WANT TO READ MORE!

*****The Time Traveller’s Wife*****

How do you think it would feel to be in love with a man who has never met you yet? Or even a man who you have never met yet, at least, not in the right time? Or how about this…you’re in love with a man who we know you’re going to marry but he is 36 and you are 6, and he’s a time traveller and you are not.
Confused? Well you won’t be. It sounds like the most complicated premise on the face of god’s green earth, but once the story swallows you up, and it will, you’ll find your feet and fall in love too. Promise!

The Time Traveller’s Wife is a beautiful story of a great love between Henry and Claire. Henry suffers from a genetic disorder that makes him *go* somewhere else in time (forwards sometimes but mostly back) when he is stressed or upset, when he’s driving or when he’s watching TV. It is a force he cannot contend with, and so he lives with it, and has lots of mechanisms for coping and survival, some rather funny and others quite sad.

The story is really, underneath it all, simply of how Henry and Claire struggle to keep an element of normality in their slightly weird and certainly “wonky” life, and throughout it all, what shines through is their immense love for each other, their belief in each other, and their longing to be together for always. It is, despite the unfortunate but colourful time travel element, a perfect love. They argue, like everyone does, they disagree with each other in quite a normal fashion, but they love and they love and they love, and you’ll get to the end and be sobbing for the love they have and share and give. You’ll ache for something like what they have if you don’t have someone of your own, and if you do, and you love, then you’ll smile quietly in recognition of something pure and beautiful and free.

The book is written with astounding attention to detail, with simple descriptions of simple things like maroon coloured socks with a hole in one heel (page 2) adding to the overwhelming sense that despite the weird circumstance of Henry’s “problem” this is real life, ordinary life, and could, infact as easily be you, or me facing the same situation. It’s these details that bring you close to the characters, close to the plot, and completely suspend your disbief to such an extent that when you finally finish the book, you want more, you can’t believe that it’s over. It is clever, and simple both at the same time, and when you read it, you’ll remember more than anything else, the real-ness of it all.

I love a novel that captures your imagination right from the very first page. Stories where you become so emotionally involved with the characters that you begin to see yourself in them, your lives, your love. Stories where the characters take hold of your consciousness so fast that you can hardly remember a time when you didn’t know them. Getting your readers to really care about the characters, what happens to them, how they feel, and all the minutiae of their lives is a skill that only very successful writers possess, and for me, it’s the key to a good read. I want to be involved, I want to feel like I’m really in the story, I want that sense of escapism from my life into theirs’ to feel real, and in this little gem of a novel, Niffenegger proves that she is a writer worth her salt because , certainly for me, she gives me everything I look for in a novel.

This is a book that will draw you in from the first paragraph, it will curl about you like smoke, and will hold you tight till the very last page has been turned. At times it will make you dizzy as you try to comprehend the time differences, but my advice is to just read, absorb, and don’t try too hard to understand, or you’ll loose the relevance of the people, and their relationship. And it is this which weaves and threads through the book and your mind, and it is this relationship, theses two,ever so real people, who will leave little footprints in your mind and stay with you long after the book has been finished and is back on the bookshelf, gathering dust.

The Time Traveller’s Wife is written by Audrey Niffenegger, and it is her first novel. Published by Vintage at Random House, it is priced at £7.99 and in my opinion is worth every single penny!

ISBN 0-099-46446-2


Thank you for reading, Kate x

Summary: A STORY OF TWO PEOPLE, BOUND TO LOVE, THROUGH TIME AND DESPITE CIRCUMSTANCE