Book Review: The Time Traveler's Wife

I finished The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger this week. I put this review on GoodReads.com - which is becoming one of my favorite daily places. I gave it 4 stars out of 5 (it was a close 5 though) This does contain spoiler to the book but I will mark them by astricks so you can skip those paragraphs.

This is the review I did on GoodReads.com:

I have been meaning to write a review for this the last few days and every time I start I am either in the mood where I am writing everything good or I am in the mood where I am annoyed with the book. I had a love/hate relationship with this book.

So so some good things to me:
1. I loved the style of writing. The going back between Henry and Clare. The jumping around from dates. I thought it worked really well for this plot.

2. The relationship between Henry and Clare developing through the years captured me and was thrilled to see their lives and feelings. It was a beautiful, intense, tragic love story.

3. Henry....I absolutely fell in love with this character. He really got to me. And I am sure I will remember him for a long time.

4. Some things people mentioned in some reviews I read that annoyed them -- the name dropping. I liked it. Because it wasn't name dropping to me but I think it is probably the authors interests thrown in to the character. And that is fine with me. I love that it was bands, poetry, art and such that was of the past. I read a book recently (next review) that really did feel like name dropping because it felt like they were trying to name everything cool and hip of today to make the characters seem cool. And in Time Traveler's Wife I felt like it was just developing the characters likes and dislikes.


********** 5. I thought the dreams of the babies and miscarriages were dark but captured feelings and the dreams so well. They were very intense and powerful. As an artist I could see the images in my head that Niffenegger painted with her words.

********** 6. I really liked how Niffenegger handled his death...the loss and feelings around the whole scene just were incredibly powerful. It didn't bother me that he died. I mean I was upset because as I said I really enjoyed his character but I feel it fit in the book really well. I did have another problem with the ending though that I will get to in a moment.


Things I didn't like:

1. I wasn't thrilled with the development of Clare's family.

2. There were some scenes that I felt were just dropped in the story and not developed very well.

2. The book is called the Time Traveler's Wife but I feel like Clare isn't the focus of the book as much as Henry and although I love Henry -- I think maybe the book should be named the Time Traveler. It just didn't feel like Clare had a strong enough voice. I even felt at time like she was along for the ride because this was how her life was suppose to end up. Instead of really mentally hashing it out, even her feelings of when he disappeared were to me skimmed over.

*********** 3. I didn't like how it ended.... I felt like we went with Clare from 6 to 37 and one day she is grieving and talking about how part of her has vanished and the next day she is 85. It felt like it just was chopped off for me. Like I missed something. I really felt that way so much I went and reread the last chapter three times to make sure there I wasn't missing something important. But it was the same each time.



So I had a love hate relationship with this book because I was so invested in them and then it felt like I had to go through grieving and didn't get the closure I wanted on their story. So it got 4 stars instead of 5.


Edit: August 2009 - I reread The Time Traveler's Wife and I have changed my rating to 5 stars. The reason is that I was so emotionly involved with the book the first time reading that I gave it a 4 stars but it really deserves 5 stars. It is one of my top 10 books. It will be a book I reread many times over.