The Time Traveler's Wife

The Time Traveler's Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

Evan’s ESS = 9 out of 10

Erin’s ESS = 8 out of 10

Content = R (Language, Adult Concepts, Nudity, Violence, Sudden Disappearances)

Why: Romance, Science fiction, and genetic disorders all blend together into one deliciously spicy novel.  The narrative jumps around between the two main characters without warning to seemingly random times and places, yet never fails to move the storyline forward.  The novel also provides a unique perspective on time travel that would make Marty McFly and Dr. Emmitt Brown proud.

We’ve always been a huge proponent of time travel and over the years have raised awareness along with countless sums of money for FFFCR (Foundation for Furthering Flux Capacitor Research), but after reading The Time Traveler’s Wife, we may have to rethink our stance.  The novel highlights and explores many of the moral and practical difficulties of such a phenomenon, none of which are easy to justify, but all of which offer healthy debate.     

Audrey Niffenegger has said that she drew inspiration from this novel from the many failed relationships in her own life.  We realize that we just digressed into a bit of a Debbie Downer and in hindsight probably should have left the inspiration tidbit out.  Oh, well, we guess that’s what happens when you’re trying to hit an arbitrary word count for each review.  Maybe it will at least garnish some sympathy points for Niffenegger.  It would really make sense to get back on track, but now we’ve completely lost our train of thought…   

Editors Note:  Just in case you slept through the 80’s, Marty McFly and Dr. Emmitt Brown were characters from the Back to the Future movie series.  Also, the FFFCR is nothing more than a figment of our imagination, but maybe sometime in the future…..