The time travel's wife

“What do you do when you meet the love of your life when you’re six years old? And he’s 36, but he’s really only eight years older than you are? If you’re Clare Abshire, you wait for each of his visits throughout the years until you meet him in real time.  Henry DeTamble is a time traveler, although not by choice. A genetic mutation causes him to spontaneously travel through time, disappearing from view, leaving behind his clothes  and possessions, and arriving naked in another time and another place. For the most part, this is a curse. Henry often has to turn to petty crime to feed and clothe himself when he travels, and must run from people, thugs, or the police. Eventually Henry returns to his present time, bringing only the bodily injuries he’s suffered back with him. Sometimes he travels back in time and visits an earlier version of himself. One of the places to which he travels often is the meadow behind Clare’s house, and throughout her younger years, Clare meets him there and falls in love with him.

This is the basic outline for the story of Henry and Clare in Audrey Niffenegger’s remarkable debut novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife. This is far from a science fiction exploration of the space-time continuum, but a heartfelt love story of two people who must live with this curse as part of their lives. Ms Niffenegger has thought through all the ramifications of the time travel, and sewn it seamlessly into the storyline. Once you accept that time traveling is a part of Henry’s life he can’t control, nothing that happens to him seems farfetched or out of character.”