Book Review - The Time Travelers Wife

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What an interesting book, the story revolves around two people Clare and “What’s His Name” (Hey I’m lucky I remembered Clare’s name) – no his name is Henry.

Henry is a time traveler, but he can’t control it, it’s sort of a spontaneous thing that just sort of happens, oh yeah and when he travels he goes naked – so no clothes, no jewelry, no filings in his teeth – just his physical body.

Clare meets Henry for the first time when she is 6 years old and he is in his mid-thirties…..she is out in a clearing in the woods and the woods and this naked man appears and knows who you are, wouldn’t that be freaky? This "clearing" acts as the major place where they meet when he's "in town"

All of the chapters start out by telling you how old Clare is and how old Henry is, from the perspective of Clare the story is fairly chronologically placed, but Henry is many ages and sometimes he is two ages (like when he time travels back to himself when he is 5 years old).

For all of Clare’s life she has known about Henry, but Henry is not aware of Clare until he is 28, so it’s sort of odd the first time they meet. Clare knows EVERYTHING about Henry but he knows nothing about her. Clare at this point knows that Henry is going to be the man that she marries but Henry has no idea.

Henry travels back in time to meet with Clare and help her through difficult times, he very rarely travels forward in time though. He travels to familiar places and familiar people and those that are aware of his ability think nothing of it when he just pops in from the middle of no-where. Henry doesn’t have control over his time traveling, either where, when or what time he’ll travel to, but on the other hand Clare knows exactly when he’s going to show up because he gave her a list of dates. The chapter of their last "meeting" was very touching, as Clare knew that this would be the last time she would see Henry before she actually met him in real life.

Henry does go "visit" some places on a regular basis though (like watching his parents push him in a baby carriage down the street, or to a traffic accident) how he's able to revisit these places is not explained.

Each chapter tells about the time they spent together, how they would meet in the forest and sometimes sneak him into her house. How they had sex on her 18th birthday (for the first time) and how they have trouble having a baby because the baby wants to time travel before it’s fully mature and won’t stay in her womb. Towards the end of the book it becomes a very fast paced page turner because you want to know what happened, and then when you reach the last page it's all tied up neatly with brown paper and twine so you can sit and say to yourself "it's all finished"

It’s a wonderful story and I would highly recommend it, a very interesting story, just enough science fiction that it’s not overpowering and just enough romance that it’s not too girly. It is set in Chicago (which is a plus for me) and is actually set not to far from where I live. I've been to several of the places that are in the book, but as for houses etc she never gives a # so I'd never be able to find them. The author actually lives in Chicago and teaches at Columbia.

Michael rates it 4 out of 5 stars