Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger ISBN: 1-931561-46-X Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing Pub. Date: September, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (88 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Amazingly good for a first novel
Comment: I love time travel stories. From Wells's THE TIME MACHINE to Finney's TIME AND AGAIN, from the romantic movie SOMEWHERE IN TIME to the action movie TIME COP. And this one was time travel with a wonderfully intimate and emotional approach. I even wept at the end, I confess it, though I also confess that I am an easy mark on that score (I've reread Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" every year for the past 14 to prepare for teaching it, and I've cried every time).
I teach science fiction writing and I write it myself, and I know from long experience that you can't please everyone. A published story that I think is dynamite will bore some of my students out of their minds. A student story that I think is dismal will elicit heaven-high praise from just about everyone in the class. So it seems to be with THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE. I thought it was terrific, engrossing, well-written, well thought out. I loved Henry and understood perfectly why the child Clare found him fascinating. I sympathized with Clare, who waited so long for her soul mate, only to lose him too soon. Their daughter Alba charmed me. I constantly wanted to know what would happen next (isn't that the measure of a book?). The only parts that didn't interest me were the snippets about Clare's papermaking, and they were so short that I was willing to put up with them for the sake of the rest. There -- something in the book did not please me; the author was not 100% on my wavelength. But that small displeasure was balanced off by all the Chicago references (yes, I am a Chicagoan), including one to a very good restaurant in my own neighborhood.
What truly fascinates me is how much people want to talk about this book. They have strong opinions pro and con, and that makes reading the reviews all the more fun.
Rating: 4
Summary: Clever and Compelling
Comment: I admit: I am an easy touch when it comes to time-travel books. I have loved such diverse books with this theme as "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", "A Wrinkle in Time," and "Time and Again."
I was not disappointed by "The Time Traveler's Wife." The book both moved me and challenged me to think about a number of deeper issues in life (most notably, the true meaning of love in a romantic relationship).
The underlying story concerns Henry, a librarian at the Newberry Library in Chicago, and Clare, his artist wife. Henry suffers from CDP (Chrono-Displacement Order) which whisks him from the present to another point of time (usually the past). One minute he may be in the stacks of the Newberry Library in 2003, the next minute he may find himself in a field (probably naked) in Michigan with his future wife as a child sometime in the early 1980's.
The author does an excellent job of sequencing the book. Even though Henry is shuttling back and forth in every chapter, she manages to move the plot forward. You do feel that you see Henry and Clare meeting, falling in love, starting a marriage and going through the stages of their lives. You do get to know their family and friends and see life happen to them.
However, I do feel that the author could have better developed all of her characters, particularly the supporting ones. I wanted to learn more about their close friends, Gomez and Charisse, and their troubled marriage. I felt that the landlady from Henry's child-whom he constantly visited in his time-traveling modes-was a sketch figure that could have been better developed. I wished that the author could have mined deeper into the inner feelings of Henry and Clare.
Still I would highly recommend this book to most readers. (If time-travel books bother you, this won't change your opinion.) It is a good, hard-to-put down read. And at the end, you're exhausted by all the travel!
Rating: 3
Summary: A good idea...
Comment: I'm not usually one for 500-page novels, but the premise of this book had me interested enough to give it a try. I'm also not a fan of present-tense narrative, but I kept reading, and it finally dawned on me that without narrating each section in the present tense, as it is "happening", things would have been even more confusing. This is one book where present-tense narrative seems to make perfect sense.
I am concerned that there was so little character development in the second half of the novel, when all the really devastating things began to happen to Clare and Henry (pregnancies, rapid aging, etc). I felt like there were chunks of the story missing...maybe edited out?...there just wasn't enough substance for me. The first half was so full of detail it was almost too much at times. You climb up a really steep rollercoaster reading this book and then zoom down to the end so quickly, it's hard to tell what's going on. I liked this novel, but I didn't love it. I'm all for new ideas, but prefer that they be fully developed. I feel like either a publishing deadline or a hasty editor has stifled this book's possibility. That's what I'm hoping it is, anyway.
 |
Title: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown ISBN: 0385504209 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
 |
Title: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time : A Novel by Mark Haddon ISBN: 0385509456 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 17 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
 |
Title: The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom ISBN: 0786868716 Publisher: Hyperion Press Pub. Date: 23 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
 |
Title: Angels & Demons by Dan Brown ISBN: 0671027360 Publisher: Pocket Star Pub. Date: 26 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
 |
Title: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd ISBN: 0142001740 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 28 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
