The Time Traveler's Wife

The Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger

So I have had this book sitting on my shelf ever since I stole it from my mother long long ago on one of my visits home. (I really do just pillage her library...sorry Mom.)

Anyway, I had heard good things about it, but had never gotten around to picking it up, but it was one of the books that jumped out at me as having been on the shelf too long without attention being paid to it when I was making my TBR Challenge 2008 list. Once on the list, it was clear, to me at least, that I would get it read. Today, I realized that I very much needed a break of a little bit from The Wheel of Time (5 volumes and thousands of pages in) so I started this book sitting in Panera this morning...

... and finished it about 10 hours later.

I loved it. I'm not even sure how to explain why I loved it as I did, but I simply could not put it down. I adored the two central characters from the very first page, and felt compelled to know their story, in it's entirety, before I did anything else. (Although I did spend some quality time in Borders this afternoon, because I am a addict, and I needed a book fix.)

This is a love story of the highest caliber. More than that, a story of longing, and the compromises that are part of living and loving with imperfect people. It's a beautiful tale, and I must give Niffenegger credit for her ability to create little phrases just perfect for the moment at hand, five or six words ideally placed together... it's a gift.

I suppose that perhaps part of the reason that I loved this book is how deeply I related to Claire's sense of longing, of missing the one that she loves when he has gone where she can't follow. I feel that way a lot these days, missing Andrew. Time travel and war are perhaps not the same, but the emotion that she describes on the very first page was certainly a part of what pulled me in.

"It's hard to be the one who stays. I keep myself busy. Time goes faster that way. I go to sleep alone, and wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I'm tired... Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love so intensified by absence?"

Overall, I can say nothing more than that it is a beautiful book, one that left me feeling transfixed and transported, a story that demanded to be read so strongly that I simply couldn't put it down.