The Time Traveler's Wife

This is an amazing book! It is rare that i can see a movie and then read the book and actually still love the movie and the book! This is an amazing piece of literature!!

This book's plot idea was good, but the execution left much to be desired. Each time trip is just like the last. The shift in point-of-view is well done, but the characters' voices are identical. The hero, a man, talks like a woman.

I didn't think time travel could be re-imagined anymore than it already has been, yet with The Time Traveler's Wife, it has. I loved this novel.

The author did an excellent job capturing the feeling and fear of loss. The time traveling was intriguing, although a little confusing at first. The foreshadowing was well done and added a fair amount of suspense to the novel. Like other reviewers, I couldn't keep Nell and Etta straight. I didn't understand the point of adding in the French, German, etc. It was a stumbling block to the modern day reader and only came across as elitist. There were several passages I skimmed rapidly through, like the pool playing scene that seemed to go on forever without a point. I didn't quite understand the repetitive comraderly communist comments from Gomez and his wife, except that the author needed to insert that veiw point into the novel. Then there were the Gomez linking up with Clare times and Henry didn't seem to mind. In conclusion, I am not sure that it wasn't simply a lifetime of lust that the storyline followed. I think that those of us who were moved by the ending were actually foisting our own concepts of love upon the characters and empathizing with their loses by imagining our own. The novel itself did not capture the depth of the self sacrificing nature of love.

I saw the movie before reading the book and thought the movie was fanastic. So I am not sure how much that may have influenced by opinion of the novel.

I loved the idea of this book. I thought the relationship between Clare as a child and Henry as middle-aged man was beautiful. I found it to be a very spiritual reminder that although our bodies change from childhood to old-age, we are the same within--the soul never changes.

I loved how the book was written in fragments and skipped around in time. While it may be confusing to the reader, it is this puzzle-like love story that makes this book so unique. The characters have different parts of the story and at the end it all comes together.

However, I have some criticisms that I thought greatly interfered with and took away from the novel's potential. For one, the vulgar sexual language was a huge turn-off. I don't think such language really flows well in a love story. I thought that it 'cheapened' the quality of the story and I tried my best to ignore the multiple times it came up in the book.

I felt as if the author filled the book with a lot of subplots and characters that were just not very necessary or interesting. I realize that maybe aside from the time travel Clare and Henry's life together was kind of typical--and that is not very exciting... but other parts of the story could have been developed much more. Maybe more depth could have been added to the characters that were used. I would have liked to know more about Henry's father and his relationship with his time traveling son. Or Henry's visits with his mother. Why Henry transformed so dramatically after he met Clare. I felt like the movie did a much better job with exploring this than the book did.

I also like stories where the characters ponder their situations. Henry nor Clare seem to really do this. This is a story about having no free will. Each and every character is a slave programmed to follow through with some predetermined actions. Never in the book do they seem to dicuss this sad situation nor do they try to rebel against it or change it. They simply accept in defeat that it must be. As a reader, I can accept that this may be the case, but I would have liked to see some kind of struggle or attempt to break free. Or at the very least some philosophical questioning about why this is and what it means. In that sense the book was shallow and left something deeper to be desired.

I didn't buy the medical slant. I would have prefered the mystery surrounding Henry's condition--but I can see how it played an important role in other parts of the book. How it may have given reader's some explanation and hope for what may have happened to Henry in his 40's when he stopped traveling (Was he cured?) and the connection between the miscarriages and their daughter who was also a time traveler. But for some reason it all seemed out of place in the book and I didn't find the medical explanation satisfying or useful in any way.

The mysteries I wish the book would have explained more was how Henry managed to hold a job all those years? What was his relationship like with his father? When did his father realize his son was a time traveler and how did he react to or explain this? How did Henry try to rescue his mother? Why did Henry begin traveling at the late age of six while his children did so in utero? How can a person handle living a life where he feels as if he has absolutely no control and all his actions have been predetermined? How does Clare feel about never having any choice in any of this? The book did nothing to explain any of these questions. And I was grateful that at least the movie tries to answer some of them.

Overall, aside from the uneveness and flaws, I enjoyed this book. The story was fascinating and sucked me in and made me think. I thought it was a beautiful idea for a love story and incredibly original. The ending is also a little different than the movie, and I prefered it. I would recommend it.