07 April 2010

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger




This romantic fiction book offers a unique take on the concept of time travel. The book follows Henry as he travels through time and appears, disappears and reappears in Clare's life. His age is ever-changing throughout the book and Clare is forever skirting around what is his past, his future and his present. The reader is left like Clare, wondering where in Henry's life we are entering every time he reappears.

This extremely popular book was all a little too perfect for my tastes. Romantic, perfect and with an interesting twist and a purely confusing chronology; it entices the reader in. Despite all this, the character development leaves a little to be desired. The book also develops very well though, despite the fact we are taken from year to year, from seeing Clare as a young child to a grown woman. The whole concept of waiting for a man for that long sort of annoyed me, especially because Clare never seemed to question her own state of affairs. We also never hear enough about Henry's past, although we definitely know it is troubled. One would imagine that disappearing at random intervals only to appear unexpectedly again would create difficulties to say the least.

So it was mainly the plot and the design of the various intervals that seemed too "perfect" to me and because of the lack of character development inherent in the plot, it was also too easy to believe. A good book overall but it didn't ring true in my mind.

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