I was not disappointed by "The Time Traveler's Wife." The book both moved me and challenged me to think about a number of deeper issues in life (most notably, the true meaning of love in a romantic relationship).

The underlying story concerns Henry, a librarian at the Newberry Library in Chicago, and Clare, his artist wife. Henry suffers from CDP (Chrono-Displacement Order) which whisks him from the present to another point of time (usually the past). One minute he may be in the stacks of the Newberry Library in 2003, the next minute he may find himself in a field (probably naked) in Michigan with his future wife as a child sometime in the early 1980's.

The author does an excellent job of sequencing the book. Even though Henry is shuttling back and forth in every chapter, she manages to move the plot forward. You do feel that you see Henry and Clare meeting, falling in love, starting a marriage and going through the stages of their lives. You do get to know their family and friends and see life happen to them.

However, I do feel that the author could have better developed all of her characters, particularly the supporting ones. I wanted to learn more about their close friends, Gomez and Charisse, and their troubled marriage. I felt that the landlady from Henry's child-whom he constantly visited in his time-traveling modes-was a sketch figure that could have been better developed. I wished that the author could have mined deeper into the inner feelings of Henry and Clare.

Still I would highly recommend this book to most readers. (If time-travel books bother you, this won't change your opinion.) It is a good, hard-to-put down read. And at the end, you're exhausted by all the travel!

166 of 190 found the following review helpful:

Beautifully written!  Apr 05, 2004
By Monica Morgan
I stumbled across this book by mistake and hesitated to read it simply because it was 518 pages. To my surprise, I devoured this book in a few days and felt a pang of sadness when it was finished. The author crafts a story of something that is quite unbelievable and yet deftly makes it so very believable. I was hooked after the first chapter. Niffenegger managed to suck me in to this story so that I felt emotionally bound to the characters and their plight. It's a tragic story that weaves so much love/pain/joy/disappointment that it fairly bursts with emotion. Read it!

110 of 125 found the following review helpful:

Raises interesting questions, but fails to deliver answers  Jul 28, 2004
By E. G MCCANDLESS "egmccandless"
This book gets two stars for being an engrossing page-turner with a surprising amount of coherence, considering the format of jumping back and forth between the past, present, and future. As others have summarized, The Time Traveler's Wife is a love story between a man who involuntarily is transported into the past and future, and the woman he loves. However, in addition to the romantic aspect, this novel raises some interesting questions regarding free will vs. predestination, actions and consequences. Henry, the Time Traveler of the title, interacts with many people from his present life (i.e. his wife, his parents, his friends, even himself), when they are younger, in many cases before they even meet Henry in real time. While this is a little hard to follow at first, Neffenegger does a nice job of tying it together quickly before it becomes too confusing.

What is interesting is that during these encounters, Henry makes a conscious effort to avoid saying or doing things that would change the course of the future. But by his very presence, he of course IS changing the course of the future. One such example has Clare as a younger girl drawing a picture of Henry. She begins to sign and date it, when Henry stops her: it's not signed, he tells her, it's on the wall of our house and there's no date. But in an exercise in free will, Clare decides that she WILL sign it. When Henry returns to his present and discovers the picture unsigned still, Clare explains that she erased it shortly after their past encounter, fearing something that small and insignificant could somehow have a catastrophic effect on their future.

That being said, the book has some scenes that drag on way too long (Christmas with Clare's parents, the Violent Femmes concert). The main characters are not all that likeable, and there's some really dumb, cheesy scenes (the worst is when Henry's colleagues, upon encountering two Henries for the first time, start to make jokes about Lois Lane and Clark Kent... huh?). Also, the book's denouement was disappointing: the final tragic ending - while not surprising, it's telegraphed throughout the book - ends up being a completely random, accidental occurrence. Ironic, yes, but not as fitting for a book that raises questions of actions and consequences. A more appropriate ending would have been if in his last visit with Ingrid, Henry receives his fatal blow from her instead. The final message of the book seems to veer away from the philosophical implications of time travel (a theme woven through the whole story), and instead focuses on the (in my opinion) lame notion of romantic love as mankind's highest ideal, "woman as salvation", you're destined to truly love only one person in this lifetime, etc. The very last scene with Clare having apparently pined her last 40 years away for Henry was utterly pathetic, and I found myself shedding not a tear for these star-crossed lovers. The one person I was really curious about, their child Alba, is not explained or accounted for past age 10. Is she cured? Does she die young? Where is she in the end of the book, aside from in Henry's past? Disappointing indeed.

Now all that aside, I have a few specific problems with the book that I just have to get off my chest. CAUTION: SPOILERS BELOW.
* Which Henry is it exactly that's waving to Clare with her dad & brother right after he gets shot, and when is that part explained?
* Why doesn't Clare mention Henry's shoulder-to-crew-cut hairstyle change the morning of their wedding day, when his hairstyle is noticed & mentioned by her everywhere else?
* If Clare and Henry know for a fact this disease is genetic and may be passed onto their children, how could they be so selfish and irresponsible as to try to conceive a baby who could then possibly time travel as an infant and appear anywhere else in time, helpless and naked, sure to die? (As a mother myself, this one really got to me)
* Why, if Henry can disappear any moment, does Clare ever let him be alone with Alba as a toddler anywhere, even if he doesn't drive?
* Why is it not explained how Henry has his feet again at 43 when he visits Clare, 82, if he lost them just after (or maybe just before) his 43rd birthday?
See, it's dumb things like this that are so unimportant, but if you notice them they can stick in your craw and then it's harder to pay attention to the plot. Anyway, thanks for reading this far, and let me know if you have answers to the above questions!

359 of 419 found the following review helpful:

A good idea for a book destroyed by pretentious writing  Oct 31, 2005
By E. Graham
I'm quite obviously in the minority here, particularly among non-fans: I found the narrative jumping around in time to be quite effective - the characters are often confused and surprised by non-linear time; this device gives us a taste of that. Nor was I bothered by the use of profanity, descriptions of sexuality, or the idea that an adult Henry maintains contact with Claire as a child.

It's what happens (or doesn't happen) in the space between that sets my teeth on edge. For example: we are forced to endure paragraph (after paragraph after paragraph) describing a game of pool. Not the interactions between characters during said pool game, no no. If you like to listen to golf on the radio, then you might find who-made-what-shot-in-which-pocket to be entertaining. I started to rage because I was wasting so much time reading this nonsense.

I was also thoroughly annoyed at the 'name dropping' style of writing that was sometimes rewarded with an explanation, but most often not. I can't remember all of the characters names offhand, but they'll enter the story with something like, 'Fred walked in and startled me.' Yeah, he startled me too. Who the hell is Fred? We find out several pages later, 'Fred Flintstone was a childhood friend'. Thanks, coulda used that information ten minutes ago.

But this isn't limited to people. The characters ponder going to Ann Sather's for something to eat. Neighbor? Relative? Last night's one-night-stand who happens to make great waffles? Two pages later it's revealed that it's a Swedish restaurant. They talk of the CSO - only later can the acronym be explained as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. As a Chicago native I recognized these references, but they grated on me nonetheless.

Same with descriptions. 'He looked like Joe Schmoe.' Great. That helps. Not 'his hair was slicked back in that Joe Schmoe style' or something like that - at least then I would start to form a mental picture. To use a similie with a subculture or hipster reference and no context is pretentious and condescending. 'He answered the phone while standing in front of a Maholy-Nagy poster'. How many people are familiar with the Chicago Bauhaus movement and would get this reference? What does it add to the story?

I've gone on too long already with my rant and haven't even mentioned the street directions - complete with street names. I don't care which streets you take to get to the library, either tell me what happens along the way or just get there already.

The one highlight of the book (and yes, there is one), is the climactic scene we all know is coming. It was handled in a very touching and sensitive way that nearly brought me to tears. If only the rest of the book could be like these three pages, I wouldn't have to count it among the absolute worst books I've ever read.

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