Email: "The Time Traveller's Wife: A Review"
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Since it is finals week, I haven't had as much time as usual to read a good book; I believe that this added to the fact that my current book is the whopping 751-page "The Fountainhead" should serve as an adequate explanation for my recycling a review. I wrote this review for a zine published by my friend Katie Payne. It is circulated mostly among our friends, and probably not read by more than 20 people, but I love writing for it. This book was one of my favorite books to write about for the zine because I enjoyed it so much. I hope that someone who reads this review will take the time to pick it up from the library over winter break. The following is the review of the best book I read all summer:

Of all the books I had the pleasure of reading this summer, one book took me by surprise and stood a head above the rest. This book was "The Time Traveler’s Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger.

The book is, at its core, a love story. It begins with the first meeting and first date of Henry and Claire, the main characters. The twist on the story is that Henry’s first meeting with Claire is not Claire’s first meeting with Henry. She met him when she was six; he came from the future and told her that she would be his wife.

Henry is supposed to be a new kind of human, kind of like the people on the TV show "Heroes" who develop special powers but are still completely human in every way. He has to hide his ability from people so they don’t think he’s crazy. The problem is, when he time travels he is unable to take anything with him, so when he goes forward or backward in time he always shows up naked. And let’s face it, everybody notices a naked guy.

Unlike other cheesy time-telling stories (yes, I am referring to you, "The Butterfly Effect"), Niffenegger didn’t waste half of the story making the protagonist try to go back and change things so his life could be perfect. Henry is unable to change things that are going to happen; he simply lives. Time is not a straight line; it is everywhere and all at once. Henry never discovers the purpose for his ability, but he learns to work with it. Eventually he learns to pick pockets so he can get food and to steal clothes from people’s houses so he doesn’t have to run around in his birthday suit.

The book jumps around between Henry’s present and Claire’s past. Henry of the future often shows up in her backyard, and they meet in secret. She keeps a chest of her father’s extra clothes for him and brings him food from her home. Claire’s relationship with Henry grows deeper as she gets older; when she turns 18, they have sex. Then Henry of the future tells Claire that she won’t meet him again for several years, and when she does, it will be Henry of the present, so he won’t know her.

The book develops the characters of Henry and Claire extremely well. When Henry and Claire finally meet, with both of them in the present for the first time, it is easy to understand Henry’s feeling of awkwardness and Claire’s frustration. She grows even more frustrated throughout their relationship as she waits for the wonderful man she knew as a child to show up, and has to live with the selfish and immature Henry of the present instead. There is a particularly interesting scene when Henry and Claire go to a punk show together. Claire runs into Henry’s ex-girlfriend in the bathroom, who warns Claire to stay away from Henry if she doesn’t want to get hurt. The girl implies that Henry treated her horribly and did unspeakable things. Claire leaves the bathroom confused and then sees Henry of the future- the Henry she knew as a girl, the one she thinks of as her Henry. She expresses her frustration with Henry in the present and he comforts her and tells her to hold on, to keep waiting for him.

Claire and Henry eventually begin to understand each other more and grow together. But their relationship becomes more complicated when they continually try and fail to have a baby. Claire becomes more and more hopeless, and Henry is desperately trying to go to the future to find any scrap of evidence that he will someday be a father.

The book had the most relatable characters of any book I’ve read in a long time. I had expected it to be a creampuff of a book, something fun and cute, but it was very thought-provoking. Even while asking you to suspend your disbelief in time travel, the author brings her characters to life in such vivid detail that everything seems completely real. It was the most beautiful love story I’ve read in a long time. Nicholas Sparks, say hello to Audrey Niffenegger. She just kicked your butt.

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