Reward for a Cat-Sitter: The Time-Traveler's Wife

[ed_rex]

I've been looking in on a friend's cat this past week, cleaning out the litter, filling up the food and water bowls and getting down on my hands and knees to make sure the feline's eyes are gleaming at me from beneath the couch.

In an email after he'd left town, he suggested I borrow his copy of new writer Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. Though it is not, as Steve suggested, "the best Sci-Fi book ever written", it is a hell of a good read, and one of the most unusual science fiction novels I've come across in a long time.

Told from the points of view of Henry DeTamble and his wife, Clare Abshire, this writer manages to brilliantly jump from one view-point to the other - and from one point in time to another and another - all the while advancing the tragic narrative with a master's control of the writer's craft.

This is a time travel story like none other, and all of you should rush out to your local independent bookstore and pick it up. It's a moving, complex and very human piece of work.

Comments

[sooguy.livejournal.com]

I loved that book.

I wrote a semi-glowing review of it on my time travel site too.

Amateur

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

Y'know, y'should feel free to post the URL - as long as it's on topic, I don't mind ya'll using my space for a little self-promotion.

Re: Amateur

[sooguy.livejournal.com]

I generally have no quams about self-promotion via URL. I was just generally lazy the day I responded to your post.

Here's my link for you and anyone else that might be interested.

http://www.timetravelreviews.com/books/niffenegger.html

I tend to analyze books from a writer's perspective as much as a readers.

[sck5000.livejournal.com]

Well, I confess that I wrote that as a slightly misleading act of manipulation, because we all know that if I had said it wasn't really sci-fi you would have put on your usual snooty prejudicial airs and stormed off to the nearest comic books store.

Besides, everybody knows that the best science fiction book ever written was The Warren Commission. Magic bullet, my ass.

Time For Some New Slags, Cat-Boy

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

I haven't bought a comic book since Cerebus finished its run a couple of years ago.

I confess, your (incorrect) claim that The Time-Traveler's Wife is the best science fiction novel ever written piqued my interest, thought mostly because I would have enjoyed explaining why it was a piece of garbage.

As it turns out, it is a very good book (and a first novel, to boot!). I may also write about it in more detail, as it is a piece of SF that doesn't feel like science fiction, even though it definitely is.