The Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
How to start this review. Let's do the negative first. I will not recommend it. Too much language. To much "intimacy", which is a polite way of saying graphic bodily action. I got real good at hitting the "next tract button on the CD player, but the language always takes you by surprise. I am not sure I liked the time traveler himself, but I did like his wife. Why did I listen to the whole thing? It was what I had for three pretty long drives. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have gone much past the second (out of 16) CDs.
But . . . the story is intriguing. He time travels against his will with no control over when he goes, how long he will be gone, where he ends up, or when he ends up. It is a genetic thing. Sometimes he goes forward. Most of the time he goes back. Emotional events seem to attract him, and there are certain patterns to his time traveling. Most people don't know he has the condition. And a very intriguing issue, he can take nothing with him or bring nothing back - including clothes - so he always appears either in the current time when he comes back, or in the other time where he goes, naked. I think the premise she worked with is absolutely brilliant.
But she ruined it by writing a story that her mother - or at least her grandmother - wouldn't have approved of.
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