Finished

• The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

  Rating: ****
  
  Very interesting novel. Parts of it are beautifully written, but remarkably free of pretension. It falls into that category of passionate (not necessarily romantic) novels for women that have a bittersweet, if not outright tragic, ending. Think Anita Shreve or Alice Sebold. I don't know that I like those as a genre. You can't really enjoy them unless you're in a dark mood. The unusual thing about this novel is the time travel element. Towards the middle of the book, Niffenegger made good use of the advantages by foreshadowing the climax and denouement of the novel. In this case, I'm grateful because it would have been too much to take all at once in the end. It was rather artfully done. Generally, the action was all over (between the 1960's to the 1990's), but her gradual intentions were pretty easy to follow. I think that that is why I liked this book much more than I thought I would - the author isn't trying to play games with you. Unfortunately, the characters were not that appealing. I think they were too human, too much like people you'd meet at school or at work. Bleh. I like my realism to stay where it is and out of my books, thank you. What's the point of reading for pleasure if the people you meet on paper aren't any better than the people that depress you in the news? They'd make for an interesting movie, though. This book was made to be a movie. I can imagine Jude Law or Robert Sean Leonard playing Henry and Jennifer Connelly or Naomi Watts as Clare.