Cannonball Read #7: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffennegger

Despite my first impressions, I really enjoyed reading this book. I saw the commercials for the movie adaptation first and I thought it looked like utter drivel. I figured that it would be just as bad as the Notebook was. ( I can say this even though I wept through that entire movie the first time. shhh! )

Anyway, the time traveler, Henry, is a man who uncontrollably travels back in time, but only to places he had already been or already will be. He travels back in time to see his future wife , Claire and meets her first at age 6. In essence, she grows up with a strange man constantly telling her that he is her husband and that they are soulmates. In a world where time travel doesn't exist, this isn't a romantic, wonderful thing, its more like indoctrination. That was , in essence, a big problem that I had with this book, Claire never had a chance to develop and explore other men. She constantly compares all other men to this (literally) unattainable man who keeps popping in and out of her life at random moment.


BUT..... she was in love and so she put up with him disappearing on their wedding day, reappearing bloodied and bruised from wherever he went. If you think about it, he could have been cheating on her with some woman from 1976 and she would never know.
Anyway, theirs was a wonderful and poignant love story. Claire spent most of her life waiting on Henry to show up but in the end she thought that their love was worth it and I supposed love knows no bounds.