The Time Traveller's Wife

This is essentially a love story, a love across ages, across lifetimes, a love that existed before it started and exists after it finished. That probably makes no sense, but things generally get murky when time travel is involved.

Henry DeTamble is a librarian, son of two reasonably famous classical musicians. He has an odd genetic makeup, which causes him to randomly relocate to arbitrary places in time and space, where he suddenly appears with no clothes on, and has to survive until the process reverses and he jumps back to where he started.

Clare Abshire is an mixed-media artist, and the love of his life. But his time jumps cause him to meet her when he is in his 40’s and she is just 6. They keep meeting, at different times and ages, until they meet for the first time, in real time.

The book seems like a metaphor for something; there are parallels drawn between Odysseus and this book, and sometimes even the life of Jesus. But both seem like overreach. All told, it is just a love story, and the time travel is used as a plot device to illustrate the concept of a soul-mate as one for all time.

Several twists and turns, coupled with the necessarily non-linear storytelling, make this a hard book to wade through in a single sitting. There are individuals who loathe this book with great fervour, and equally, those who adore it.