The Time Traveler's Wife (Harvest Book)

The Time Traveler's Wife is well written, easy to read, and has a lyrical sensibility. That being said, I thought the book's premises, that it can be both a love story and pseudo-science fiction novel, difficult to believe on either merit and clouded by seemingly native dialogue between characters that, at times, seemed out of character. From the start, readers familiar with science fiction and...more

The Time Traveler's Wife is well written, easy to read, and has a lyrical sensibility. That being said, I thought the book's premises, that it can be both a love story and pseudo-science fiction novel, difficult to believe on either merit and clouded by seemingly native dialogue between characters that, at times, seemed out of character. From the start, readers familiar with science fiction and the current philosophies of time travel are forced to believe that a "time traveler" can be in two different times at once (a nice writing device but flawed), and that although the character cannot control his time destination he manages to arrive at some of the same location at opportune moments to the story for unexplained reasons. Even stranger, on a romantic level, I found it difficult to understand how a pre-pubescent girl can have seemingly mature psycho-sexual thoughts for someone she meets infrequently and under the most ridiculous circumstances. Many of the scenes are written with one character as an adult and the other character half or almost a third of the other's age. I found some of the scenes between the pre-pubescent girl and the older male time traveler downright creepy. The quick-edit, jumpiness between times (a product of the novel's diary-style format) can be distracting and awkward to further the reader's understanding of character development, and disruptive to the narrative. There isn't so much narrative as there are endless paragraphs of longing between the two main characters have for each other-a lot of which happens when they are not together. This novel has a good premise but lacks the detail and flow good sci-fi stories have. As a love story, I thought some of the diary entries were sappy, esoteric and felt like endless diatribes about relationships and unrequited love.   hide