Book summary

Audrey Niffenegger's bestselling novel has a fantastical concept--a man who involuntarily travel through time and his wife--but for all its strangeness, its true power lies in its ability to make the reader feel the force of the characters' love and the depth of their tragedies. Henry DeTamble suffers from a genetic condition called Chrono-Displacement that causes him to unexpectedly slip backwards or forwards in time, appearing completely naked at times and places with special significant to his life. As a result, he has visited his wife Clare many times during her childhood, so when she finally meets him at the age of 20 she already knows much about his personality and their life together in the future--he, however, does not know who she is because his time traveling episodes have not happened yet. Sly charming magic of this sort infuses the novel with a kind of dreamy wondrousness. More importantly, the time-traveling acts as a marvelous metaphor for the nature of love, how it changes, how it's constantly impacted by the events of the past, and the promises of the future.

Media reviews

"Mainstreamed time-travel romance, cleverly executed and tastefully furnished....Presented as a literary novel, this is more accurately an exceedingly literate one....A LOVE STORY for educated, upper-middle-class tastes...."