Just finished "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger

[Ezlivin]

And, damn, what a book.

My wife read it first and one evening as she neared the finish she had to get up and get a box of tissues. I told her that her reaction didn't encourage me to read it, as I wasn't looking forward to bawling.

But the book just consumed her like no other. She (like me) reads all the time and I've grown quite accustomed to seeing her curl up with a book. But "The Time Traveler's Wife" was a like some sort of drug; she couldn't stay away. She was like a kid enjoying her first book, reading a page or a chapter whenever she got a chance, staying up late, getting up early and not even noticing me when I entered the room.

I finished it. I bawled.

I definitely recommend it.

[terip64]

1. I agree! I loved it!

[Vexatious Ape]

2. what's it about?

[Ezlivin]

3. From Publishers Weekly

This highly original first novel won the largest advance San Francisco-based MacAdam/Cage had ever paid, and it was money well spent. Niffenegger has written a soaring love story illuminated by dozens of finely observed details and scenes, and one that skates nimbly around a huge conundrum at the heart of the book: Henry De Tamble, a rather dashing librarian at the famous Newberry Library in Chicago, finds himself unavoidably whisked around in time. He disappears from a scene in, say, 1998 to find himself suddenly, usually without his clothes, which mysteriously disappear in transit, at an entirely different place 10 years earlier-or later. During one of these migrations, he drops in on beautiful teenage Clare Abshire, an heiress in a large house on the nearby Michigan peninsula, and a lifelong passion is born. The problem is that while Henry's age darts back and forth according to his location in time, Clare's moves forward in the normal manner, so the pair are often out of sync. But such is the author's tenderness with the characters, and the determinedly ungimmicky way in which she writes of their predicament (only once do they make use of Henry's foreknowledge of events to make money, and then it seems to Clare like cheating) that the book is much more love story than fantasy. It also has a splendidly drawn cast, from Henry's violinist father, ruined by the loss of his wife in an accident from which Henry time-traveled as a child, to Clare's odd family and a multitude of Chicago bohemian friends. The couple's daughter, Alba, inherits her father's strange abilities, but this is again handled with a light touch; there's no Disney cuteness here. Henry's foreordained end is agonizing, but Niffenegger has another card up her sleeve, and plays it with poignant grace. It is a fair tribute to her skill and sensibility to say that the book leaves a reader with an impression of life's riches and strangeness rather than of easy thrills.

[stanwyck]

4. Wonderful book! So original

and a real love story. You really believe in the characters and their genuine love. A rare book. A depiction of romantic love that isn't gooey and adolescent.

[RetroLounge]

5. It was an amazing book!

I borrowed the paperback from a friend and couldn't put it down.

I recently found a hardcover 1st ed signed by the author...

:hi:

RL