I really, really liked this.... but not so much the end of his life..... It didn't make sense.

But other than that, I'm glad that I finally read it.... Thanks to whomever it was who wrote the last review.

I kept avoiding this because of the other people (in a particular group) who read it & "loved" it.... I found that I normally hated almost everything they read....

It really is rather bittersweet, non-soppy, and a decent love story! (

)

Auntie-Nanuuq | Jan 8, 2017 |

A man is able to spontaneously time travel. But he has no control over it. He always comes back to where he left. This is the account of his romance with his wife to be and his wife. The author[who is a woman] seems to be sex obsessed. That is my only problem with this book, there are enough graphic scenes that I can't recommend it.
However, t is fantastically written, an emotional tour-de-force, compelling, it forced me to finish it, keeping me glued to it the entire time. (

)

BookstoogeLT | Dec 10, 2016 |

It's beautiful, but my god is it ever sad and depressing really. Everything is so inevitable and unchangeable... What has been has been and will be again.

:(

(

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cybercarotte | Nov 23, 2016 |

Lovely story, entertaining and thought provoking with some great characters. Just wasn't amazing and I felt like it was longer than it needed to be. (

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bastardreading | Oct 12, 2016 |

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger is without a doubt one of my favorite novels of all time. I love that there are different narrators throughout the novel. I also love that readers get to experience the time traveling along with the main character who time travels. I think The Time Traveler's Wife is beautifully written and I highly recommend it.

alyssamerryman3 | Oct 10, 2016 |

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▾Published reviews

5 reviews

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thingScore 65

Um, I don't say this very often but I could NOT finish this book. I originally chose it as my 'April Book of the Month' because I was challenged to read a book that has been sitting on my 'to-read' list for WAY TOO LONG and also one that I had tried to read before but didn't get through. Feeling like I hadn't given this book a fair chance, it seemed like a no-brainer choice. However... it just isn't a book for me. I made it MUCH further than I have in the past (approx. 200 pages) but the fact that I am not 'craving' the read that I normally do, I know that I am done. This book will be entered into the vault, never to be seen again (at least by these eyes).

I'm sad to add a book to the 'couldn't finish' list, but... life is too short to read something I am not enjoying!!

added by LindsayGentles | editTurning the Pages, Lindsay Gentles (Apr 16, 2011)

The triumph of the book is the triumph of normality, of setting up a decent family life even if you are constantly dissappearing from it, of being loyal to somebody with what Niffenegger finally explains as a genetic dysfunction - chrono-displacement, as she calls it.

added by mikeg2 | editThe guardian, Natasha Walter (Jan 31, 2004)

"The Time Traveler's Wife" can be an exasperating read, but as a love story it has its appeal: Refreshingly, the novel portrays long-term commitment as something lively and exuberant rather than dutiful and staid, evoking both the comforts it brings us and the tribulations we learn to live with.

added by Shortride | editThe Boston Globe, Judith Maas (Dec 8, 2003)

Niffenegger, despite her moving, razor-edged prose, doesn't claim to be a romantic. She writes with the unflinching yet detached clarity of a war correspondent standing at the sidelines of an unfolding battle. She possesses a historian's eye for contextual detail. This is no romantic idyll.

added by Shortride | editUSA Today, Kathy Balog (Sep 24, 2003)

About halfway through Audrey Niffenegger's debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, you realize you're going to be devastated. You love the characters, you're deeply involved in their lives, you can sense tragedy coming and you know it's going to hurt. But there's no way you can stop reading... Niffenegger structures the novel clearly enough that the timelines never get tangled, and her writing is so strong you'd keep going even if you did get confused.

added by Shortride | editBookPage, Becky Ohlsen (Sep 1, 2003)

▾Other authors

» Add other authors (22 possible)

Author name	Role	Type of author	Work?	Status
Audrey Niffenegger	—	primary author	all editions	calculated
Hope, William	Narrator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Lefkow, Laurel	Narrator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Swahn, Sven Christer	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed

▾Work-to-work relationships

Is contained in

The Lovely Bones AND The Time Traveller's Wife by Alice Sebold

The Red Tent / The Time Traveller's Wife by Anita Diamant

Has the adaptation

The Time Traveler's Wife [2009 film] by Robert Schwentke

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▾Common Knowledge

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Series (with order)

Canonical title

Original title

The Time Traveler's Wife

Alternative titles

Original publication date

2003-09-17

2003

People/Characters

Henry DeTamble

Clare DeTamble (née Abshire)

Important places

Chicago, Illinois, USA

Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Evanston, Illinois, USA

South Haven, Michigan, USA

Important events

World Trade Center attack

Related movies

The Time Traveler's Wife (2009 ∙ IMDb)

Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

Awards and honors

Alex Award (2004)

John W. Campbell Memorial Award Finalist (2005)

British Book Award (Popular Fiction Award, 2006)

Waterstones top 25 books of the last 25 years (2007, No 2)

Pajiba's Best Books of the Generation (2007, No 06)

(show all 21 items)

Epigraph

Clock time is our bank manager,
tax collector, police inspector;
this inner time is our wife.

— J. B. PRIESTLEY,
Man and Time

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

—DEREK WALCOTT

Oh not because happiness exists,
that too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss.

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world, in which some strange way keeps calling us. Us, the most fleeting of all.

. . . Ah, but what can we take along
into that other real? Not the art of looking,
which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.
The sufferings, then. And, above all, the heaviness,
and the long experience of love,—just what is wholly
unsayable.

—from The Ninth Duino Elegy, RAINER MARIA RILKE,
translated by STEPHEN MITCHELL

Dedication

For

Elizabeth Hillman Tamandl
May 20, 1915-December 18, 1986

And

Norbert Charles Tamandl
February 11, 1915-May 23, 1957

First words

PROLOGUE

Clare: It's hard being left behind.

FIRST DATE, ONE
Saturday, October 26, 1991 (Henry is 28, Clare is 20)

Clare: The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble.

Quotations

Henry: I didn't know you were coming or I'd have cleaned up a little more. My life, I mean, not just the apartment.

I imagined my mother laughing at me, her well-plucked eyebrows raised high at the sight of her half-Jewish son marooned in the midst of Christmas in Goyland.

Last words

(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)

Disambiguation notice

Publisher's editors

Blurbers

Publisher series

Original language

▾References

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (3)

File:TimeTravellersWife.jpg

Quantum fiction

The Time Traveler's Wife

▾LibraryThing members' description

Book description

The Time Traveler's Wife is an unconventional love story that centers on a man with a strange genetic disorder that causes him to unpredictably time travel, and his wife, an artist who has to cope with his frequent absences and dangerous experiences.

Haiku summary

▾Book descriptions

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 015602943X, Paperback)

A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger's cinematic storytelling that makes the novel's unconventional chronology so vibrantly triumphant.

An enchanting debut and a spellbinding tale of fate and belief in the bonds of love, The Time Traveler's Wife is destined to captivate readers for years to come.

(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 12 Mar 2015 18:24:46 -0400)

(see all 6 descriptions)

▾Library descriptions

A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger's cinematic storytelling that makes the novel's unconventional chronology so vibrantly triumphant. An enchanting debut and a spellbinding tale of fate and belief in the bonds of love, The Time Traveler's Wife is destined to captivate readers for years to come.… (more)

» see all 14 descriptions