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The Time Traveler's Wife Paperback – May 27, 2004
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An enchanting debut and a spellbinding tale of fate and belief in the bonds of love, The Time Traveler's Wife is destined to captivate readers for years to come.
- Print length546 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarcourt
- Publication dateMay 27, 2004
- Dimensions5.75 x 1.75 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100224072374
- ISBN-13978-0224072373
- Lexile measure720L
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Tremendous grace and imagination . . . A love story without softness or flinchiing." -- The Washington Post Book World
"[A] time-travel love story par excellence. . . . [A] soaring celebration of thhe victory of love over time." -- Chicago Tribune
Spirited . . . Niffenegger plays ingeniously in her temporal hall of mirrors." -- The New Yorker
From the Back Cover
A most untraditional story, this is the celebrated tale of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate affair endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trap that tests the strength of fate and basks in the bonds of love.
One of People magazine's Top Ten Books of the Year
"[A] time-travel love story par excellence. . . . It will be a hard-hearted reader who is not moved to tears by this soaring celebration of the victory of love over time." --Chicago Tribune
Audrey Niffenegger is a professor in the M.F.A. program at the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts. She lives in Chicago. The Time Traveler's Wife is her first novel; her second, Her Fearful Symmetry, takes place next to London's Highgate Cemetery.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
OUT OF TIME
Oh not because happiness exists,
that too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss.
But because truly being here is so much; because everything here
apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way
keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.
...Ah, but what can we take along
into that other realm? Not the art of looking,
which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.
The sufferings, then. And, above all, the heaviness,
and the long experience of love,-just what is wholly
unsayable.
- from The Ninth Duino Elegy,
RAINER MARIA RILKE,
translated by STEPHEN MITCHELL
FIRST DATE, ONE
Saturday, October 26, 1991 (Henry is 28, Clare is 20)
CLARE: The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble. I sign the Visitors' Log: Clare Abshire, 11:15 10-26-91 Special Collections. I have never been in the Newberry Library before, and now that I've gotten past the dark, foreboding entrance I am excited. I have a sort of Christmas-morning sense of the library as a big box full of beautiful books. The elevator is dimly lit, almost silent. I stop on the third floor and fill out an application for a Reader's Card, then I go upstairs to Special Collections. My boot heels rap the wooden floor. The room is quiet and crowded, full of solid, heavy tables piled with books and surrounded by readers. Chicago autumn morning light shines through the tall windows. I approach the desk and collect a stack of call slips. I'm writing a paper for an art history class. My research topic is the Kelmscott Press Chaucer. I look up the book itself and fill out a call slip for it. But I also want to read about papermaking at Kelmscott. The catalog is confusing. I go back to the desk to ask for help. As I explain to the woman what I am trying to find, she glances over my shoulder at someone passing behind me. "Perhaps Mr. DeTamble can help you," she says. I turn, prepared to start explaining again, and find myself face to face with Henry.
I am speechless. Here is Henry, calm, clothed, younger than I have ever seen him. Henry is working at the Newberry Library, standing in front of me, in the present. Here and now. I am jubilant. Henry is looking at me patiently, uncertain but polite.
"Is there something I can help you with?" he asks.
"Henry!" I can barely refrain from throwing my arms around him. It is obvious that he has never seen me before in his life.
"Have we met? I'm sorry, I don't...." Henry is glancing around us, worrying that readers, co-workers are noticing us, searching his memory and realizing that some future self of his has met this radiantly happy girl standing in front of him. The last time I saw him he was sucking my toes in the Meadow.
I try to explain. "I'm Clare Abshire. I knew you when I was a little girl..." I'm at a loss because I am in love with a man who is standing before me with no memories of me at all. Everything is in the future for him. I want to laugh at the weirdness of the whole thing. I'm flooded with years of knowledge of Henry, while he's looking at me perplexed and fearful. Henry wearing my dad's old fishing trousers, patiently quizzing me on multiplication tables, French verbs, all the state capitals; Henry laughing at some peculiar lunch my seven-year-old self has brought to the Meadow; Henry wearing a tuxedo, undoing the studs of his shirt with shaking hands on my eighteenth birthday. Here! Now! "Come and have coffee with me, or dinner or something...." Surely he has to say yes, this Henry who loves me in the past and the future must love me now in some bat-squeak echo of other time. To my immense relief he does say yes. We plan to meet tonight at a nearby Thai restaurant, all the while under the amazed gaze of the woman behind the desk, and I leave, forgetting about Kelmscott and Chaucer and floating down the marble stairs, through the lobby and out into the October Chicago sun, running across the park scattering small dogs and squirrels, whooping and rejoicing.
HENRY: It's a routine day in October, sunny and crisp. I'm at work in a small windowless humidity-controlled room on the fourth floor of the Newberry, cataloging a collection of marbled papers that has recently been donated. The papers are beautiful, but cataloging is dull, and I am feeling bored and sorry for myself. In fact, I am feeling old, in the way only a twenty-eight-year-old can after staying up half the night drinking overpriced vodka and trying, without success, to win himself back into the good graces of Ingrid Carmichel. We spent the entire evening fighting, and now I can't even remember what we were fighting about. My head is throbbing. I need coffee. Leaving the marbled papers in a state of controlled chaos, I walk through the office and past the page's desk in the Reading Room. I am halted by Isabelle's voice saying, "Perhaps Mr. DeTamble can help you," by which she means "Henry, you weasel, where are you slinking off to?" And this astoundingly beautiful amber-haired tall slim girl turns around and looks at me as though I am her personal Jesus. My stomach lurches. Obviously she knows me, and I don't know her. Lord only knows what I have said, done, or promised to this luminous creature, so I am forced to say in my best librarianese, "Is there something I can help you with?" The girl sort of breathes "Henry!" in this very evocative way that convinces me that at some point in time we have a really amazing thing together. This makes it worse that I don't know anything about her, not even her name. I say "Have we met?" and Isabelle gives me a look that says You asshole. But the girl says, "I'm Clare Abshire. I knew you when I was a little girl," and invites me out to dinner. I accept, stunned. She is glowing at me, although I am unshaven and hung over and just not at my best. We are going to meet for dinner this very evening, at the Beau Thai, and Clare, having secured me for later, wafts out of the Reading Room. As I stand in the elevator, dazed, I realize that a massive winning lottery ticket chunk of my future has somehow found me here in the present, and I start to laugh. I cross the lobby, and as I run down the stairs to the street I see Clare running across Washington Square, jumping and whooping, and I am near tears and I don't know why.
Later that evening:
HENRY: At 6:00 p.m. I race home from work and attempt to make myself attractive. Home these days is a tiny but insanely expensive studio apartment on North Dearborn; I am constantly banging parts of myself on inconvenient walls, countertops and furniture. Step One: unlock seventeen locks on apartment door, fling myself into the living room-which-is-also-my-bedroom and begin stripping off clothing. Step Two: shower and shave. Step Three: stare hopelessly into the depths of my closet, gradually becoming aware that nothing is exactly clean. I discover one white shirt still in its dry cleaning bag. I decide to wear the black suit, wing tips, and pale blue tie. Step Four: don all of this and realize I look like an FBI agent. Step Five: look around and realize that the apartment is a mess. I resolve to avoid bringing Clare to my apartment tonight even if such a thing is possible. Step Six: look in full-length bathroom mirror and behold angular, wild-eyed 6' 1" ten-year-old Egon Schiele look-alike in clean shirt and funeral director suit. I wonder what sorts of outfits this woman has seen me wearing, since I am obviously not arriving from my future into her past wearing clothes of my own. She said she was a little girl? A plethora of unanswerables runs through my head. I stop and breathe for a minute. Okay. I grab my wallet and my keys, and away I go: lock the thirty-seven locks, descend in the cranky little elevator, buy roses for Clare in the shop in the lobby, walk two blocks to the restaurant in record time but still five minutes late. Clare is already seated in a booth and she looks relieved when she sees me. She waves at me like she's in a parade.
"Hello," I say. Clare is wearing a wine-colored velvet dress and pearls. She looks like a Botticelli by way of John Graham: huge gray eyes, long nose, tiny delicate mouth like a geisha. She has long red hair that covers her shoulders and falls to the middle of her back. Clare is so pale she looks like a waxwork in the candlelight. I thrust the roses at her. "For you."
"Thank you," says Clare, absurdly pleased. She looks at me and realizes that I am confused by her response. "You've never given me flowers before."
I slide into the booth opposite her. I'm fascinated. This woman knows me; this isn't some passing acquaintance of my future hegiras. The waitress appears and hands us menus.
"Tell me," I demand.
"What?"
"Everything. I mean, do you understand why I don't know you? I'm terribly sorry about that-"
"Oh, no, you shouldn't be. I mean, I know...why that is." Clare lowers her voice. "It's because for you none of it has happened yet, but for me, well, I've known you for a long time."
Copyright © 2003 by Audrey Niffenegger
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.
Product details
- ASIN : 015602943X
- Publisher : Harcourt (May 27, 2004)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 546 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0224072374
- ISBN-13 : 978-0224072373
- Lexile measure : 720L
- Item Weight : 14.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.75 x 1.75 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #329,658 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,004 in Time Travel Romances
- #3,349 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #6,726 in Romantic Fantasy (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author

Audrey Niffenegger is a visual artist and a faculty member at Columbia College in Chicago. In addition to her bestselling debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, she is the author of two illustrated novels, The Three Incestuous Sisters and The Adventuress. She lives in Chicago.
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Top reviews from the United States
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For me, this book was an extremely tedious read, to the point that I actually set the book aside 3 different times while reading so I could finish other books that ended up being way more "worthy" reads. I felt that the pacing of the book was way too slow and oftentimes, the story went absolutely nowhere. A large part of this had to do with the writing being very inconsistent – at times, the writing was choppy, with a whole paragraph consisting of short, and sometimes incomplete, sentences, but then the next paragraph would have super long sentences and descriptions, then a few paragraphs later, it would be choppy again. Speaking of descriptions, that was another area which, looking at some of the reviews, I wasn't the only one who felt was problematic. Normally, I have no problem with authors being descriptive, as long as it is done properly and there is an identifiable purpose to being overly-descriptive – for example, to establish setting or to pull the reader into the characters' worlds or to relay particular characters' emotions, train of thought, etc. Unfortunately, this wasn't one of those cases, at least not for me. Throughout the book, the author often went into excruciating detail about the smallest of things that, for the most part, did nothing to further the plot (i.e. the grocery lists, detailed descriptions of food, the steps that Clare would take when putting together an art project, etc.). There were also entire swaths of dialogue between characters (i.e.: "…there is a knock at the door, Henry says, 'Come in', the door opens…" ) as well as quite a few scenes that I felt were meaningless, to the point that I wondered (more often than not) why the author even bothered to put those scenes in there (one example that sticks out is that scene at a party where Henry was having a detailed discussion with some strangers about what constitutes "punk" and "rock" and then proceeds to rattle off a list of rock (punk?) bands that they should be listening to). To me, all these extraneous descriptions, scenes, dialogue, etc. felt like 'unnecessary fluff' that seemed to serve no purpose other than to make the book way longer than it needed to be (my version was 530 pages). I honestly feel that if all the unnecessary stuff was cut from the book, it could've probably been pared down to around 350 pages or so).
I also found the way the book was structured to be very distracting – but this could just be me not understanding (or appreciating) the author's way of telling the story. The narrative goes back and forth in time, which is not a problem, since a lot of books do this and usually it just takes a little bit of slowing down the reading and sometimes checking back a few pages to see where the previous time period left off. The problem with the narrative here is that it doesn't simply switch back and forth between time periods – rather, it mixes past, present, and future sporadically throughout the book. Even though each chapter was labeled with the dates and characters involved as well as their ages at the time, I still found it extremely hard to follow the narrative, mostly because the order with which the author places many of the events that occur didn't really make sense. It also didn't help that some of the scenarios were too far-fetched (which I guess should be expected given this book is about time travel and therefore already puts it into 'science fiction' territory). Perhaps I'm just not keen on time-travel and science fiction stuff but I truly felt confused with all the instances of the characters appearing with different "versions" of other characters (i.e. the different versions of Clare that didn't always match up with the different versions of Henry) or, in some cases, the same character appearing in "duplicate" form (i.e. Henry's current self with his past self or future self). I actually spent so much time trying to sort out which Henry and which Clare was narrating each section that I ended up not paying much attention to the story itself (which was another reason why I wasn't able to relate to any of the characters on an emotional level – I could barely keep up with who was who)! I think if the author had structured the book differently, like in a way that was less distracting, I may have been able to focus on the story itself and perhaps actually find something to enjoy about it.
Overall, despite the issues I talk about above, I don't feel that this book was a complete lost cause (which I guess is obvious since I chose to give 3 stars instead of 1 or 2). It was definitely readable and some sections I would even say were entertaining. However, taken as a whole, the story didn't work for me. Even when I tried approaching it from a "contemporary romance" point of view, the story still fell flat for me, as I felt emotionally detached from the characters and didn't feel anything for anyone except for maybe one or two minor characters. While I don't really feel it is appropriate for me to comment on whether I would recommend this book or not (it didn't work for me but perhaps it might work for others), I know for sure that this is one book I wouldn't want to spend time reading again.
The story has hard moments and is not for the squeamish of faint of heart. For all others, it can be a rewarding and thought-provoking read.
I am one that usually loves time travel books and/or movies. I must admit this one was the most complex with multiple journeys back and forth across time.
One might think by reading my title that the time travel itself is what left me confused. However, it was inconsistencies with the characters and/or circumstances that left me a bit perplexed.
For example, the author made it very clear that Henry did not have any control over when he would time travel or what time frame he would be traveling to. Yet, towards the end of the book, Clare is wondering why Henry is only “visiting” their daughter and very rarely “chooses” to visit with her. If Henry’s condition was triggered purely by his own genetic deficiencies, it is hard for me to believe that he wouldn’t have appeared to Clare more often in her later life, even if he didn’t want to hurt her any further.
Another thing that was mentioned was that Henry’s time traveling is often triggered when he is under extreme stress. While there were plenty of examples that corroborated this fact, like his mother’s death or on the morning of his wedding, I also remember him time traveling very randomly. I might be confusing the book with the movie, but I remember that he time traveled for a second time on the night of his wedding, when the stress of the day was over, also at times when they were just talking (like in the movie when he was carrying the dinner dishes to the table). These inconsistencies didn’t stop me from enjoying their story, it just made me wonder.
Speaking of the movie, I saw it first and chose to read the book, because books are usually better. While I did enjoy some of the book’s details that the movie didn’t have time to explore (like some of the scenes with Henry and Clare’s families), I do agree with some other reviewers who felt that the book was a little too vulgar, too long, and presented situations that were totally unnecessary to the main plot. I also didn’t care for the stereotypical portrayal of people of different ethnicities.
As a result, I actually enjoyed the movie more in this case. While I would have liked some more details that weren’t explained in the movie (which is why I chose to read the book), I felt that most of the details that were in the book and not in the movie were just extraneous, and were not pivotal to the main plot.
I also felt the movie did a really great job editing out not only the boring and cumbersome parts that made the book “drag” at times, but also some of the crude and insensitive plot devices that I felt stripped away some of the romance that was present in the movie.
If I was going to read a 500+ page book
I would have liked some extra character development for both Henry and Clare rather than endless descriptions of punk bands, museum exhibits, grocery lists, as well as secondary character crushes that only seemed to weaken Henry and Clare’s bond with each other rather than to strengthen it.
In conclusion, I would say if you loved the book, the movie might be disappointing. However, if you are a hopeless romantic, but found the book a little “too rough around the edges”, I would suggest giving the movie a try. It really does bring out the beauty of Henry and Clare’s love, without offending the senses.
Top reviews from other countries
Viagem no tempo, ainda mais envolvendo romance, é um assunto que me atrai muito. Fiquei completamente apaixonada pela temática e ao ler a história não poderia ser diferente. Poder acompanhar a vida de um viajante no tempo e suas implicações foi, em alguns momentos angustiante, revoltante e emocionante. Ele não escolheu passar por isso, simplesmente nasceu assim.
O livro é divido em partes. em cada uma delas há diversos capítulos e dentro de cada um, há separações temporais - começa com a data e a idade que ele tem no momento. Isso pode ser meio confuso no início porque o livro não tem uma linha do tempo linear. Então alguns acontecimentos só são revelados bem depois de quando realmente aconteceu, sem falar que alterna entre passado e futuro.
No meio da história pensei saber como seria o fim, mas eu estava enganada. A autora consegue nos surpreender no desenrolar dos fatos e preciso dizer que chorei muito depois de acompanhar essa linda história de amor que superou o tempo. Eles definitivamente nasceram um para o outro.
Algumas pessoas podem achar a escrita muito descritiva, no entanto eu gostei porque foi uma forma de expandir o meu vocabulário.
Se você curte romance, não pode deixar de ler.
La historia está fácil de leer y entretenida















