Friday 11 March 2011

Niffenegger, Audrey "The Time Traveler's Wife"



Niffenegger, Audrey "The Time Traveler's Wife" - 2003

As a start I have to say, I really don't like science fiction. My husband and boys don't watch any sci-fi movies with me any more because I always come up with logical explanations why something doesn't work, mostly the author isn't constant in their plot and then it all get's really illogical.

Anyway, I thought the story itself was well written, I liked the characters.

But the whole time-travelling thing really was too much. Everything was so weird, whatever seemed to be said in one part was contradicted in the next, there are many plots that really don't make sense, even if this chronological disorder would exist, which is - of course - rubbish.

Someone suggested to take the whole book apart and write it again in the time traveler's chronological order. And this is where it starts. Of course, you would have to be able to do this in "normal life" but here it doesn't work because he doesn't have a chronological order.

I certainly wouldn't have read this book if it wasn't a book club read but I have picked up others that way and really enjoyed them. Not this one, though. One of the worst books ever.

We discussed this in our book club in March 2006.

From the back cover:

"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."

4 comments:

  1. I've been struggling with this one for some time, but her latest book 'My disconnected symmetry' (I think, something like that anyway) is a fantastic read, I couldn't put down!

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  2. I'm glad I'm not the only one, Trudi. Well, someone in the book club really didn't like it either (and that's an understatement). Will have to look into the other one but I don't think I'll pick up one of her other books. At least not as long as there are so many good authors out there whose books I haven't read.

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  3. Sorry you didn't like it, but although I also don't like time travel books, this one was actually much better than that for me. But I get it!

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    1. Thanks, Davida. While I sometimes like magic realism, this really, really wasn't for me. And I doubt I will ever pick up another book by this author, too many good ones out there.

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