The Time Traveler's Wife Author: Visit Amazon's Audrey Niffenegger Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0547119798 | Format: EPUB
The Time Traveler's Wife Description
From Publishers Weekly
This clever and inventive tale works on three levels: as an intriguing science fiction concept, a realistic character study and a touching love story. Henry De Tamble is a Chicago librarian with "Chrono Displacement" disorder; at random times, he suddenly disappears without warning and finds himself in the past or future, usually at a time or place of importance in his life. This leads to some wonderful paradoxes. From his point of view, he first met his wife, Clare, when he was 28 and she was 20. She ran up to him exclaiming that she'd known him all her life. He, however, had never seen her before. But when he reaches his 40s, already married to Clare, he suddenly finds himself time travelling to Clare's childhood and meeting her as a 6-year-old. The book alternates between Henry and Clare's points of view, and so does the narration. Reed ably expresses the longing of the one always left behind, the frustrations of their unusual lifestyle, and above all, her overriding love for Henry. Likewise, Burns evokes the fear of a man who never knows where or when he'll turn up, and his gratitude at having Clare, whose love is his anchor. The expressive, evocative performances of both actors convey the protagonists' intense relationship, their personal quirks and their reminiscences, making this a fascinating audio.
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--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
On the surface, Henry and Clare Detamble are a normal couple living in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. Henry works at the Newberry Library and Clare creates abstract paper art, but the cruel reality is that Henry is a prisoner of time. It sweeps him back and forth at its leisure, from the present to the past, with no regard for where he is or what he is doing. It drops him naked and vulnerable into another decade, wearing an age-appropriate face. In fact, it's not unusual for Henry to run into the other Henry and help him out of a jam. Sound unusual? Imagine Clare Detamble's astonishment at seeing Henry dropped stark naked into her parents' meadow when she was only six. Though, of course, until she came of age, Henry was always the perfect gentleman and gave young Clare nothing but his friendship as he dropped in and out of her life. It's no wonder that the film rights to this hip and urban love story have been acquired.
Elsa GaztambideCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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- Hardcover: 560 pages
- Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Reprint edition (November 22, 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0547119798
- ISBN-13: 978-0547119793
- Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Unlike a lot of the other critics of this book, I didn't have a problem with the idea that a six-year-old Clare could fall in love with a forty-year-old Henry. I didn't have a problem with Henry breaking into places or all that other stuff either. But I had MANY problems with this book.
One of the main problems I have with this book is brilliantly exemplified on page 392 -- the date, September 11th, 2001:
"Henry says, 'Wake up, Clare.' I open my eyes. The television picture swerves around. A city street. A sky. A white skyscraper on fire. An airplane, toylike, slowly flies into the second white tower. Silent flames shoot up. Henry turns up the volume. 'Oh my God,' says the voice of the television. 'Oh my God.'"
... And then this event is never referred to ever again. The story does not take place in New York, nor does 9/11 bear any kind of noticeable emotional impact upon any of the characters in any way. And yet this paragraph is in the book anyway. Why? Good question -- I'd like to know too. But this is only the most typified example of the author's compulsive habit of putting in useless subplots and shallow tangents into the book for no particular reason at all. Examples of this are littered throughout the book. Henry's mother died when he was only a young boy -- this apparently had such a traumatic effect upon him that he is constantly involuntarily sent back to the moment of her death to witness it again -- Henry even goes so far as to say that it's almost as if all his time traveling REVOLVES around this one event. Okay, fine. I can accept that -- there's a lot of potential in an idea like that. But where does the author take this? Nowhere. Absolutely nowhere.
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