My Top 6 - 'The Time Traveler's Wife'

Amazingly, this is Audrey Niffenegger's first novel - I can't wait to read her next one. This is a stunningly beautiful book, again in the genre of Magic Realism. I think most people have heard of this book, it's already made it onto several 'modern classic' lists, and as soon as I had finished it I emailed everyone I could think of and told them to read it.

The tale follows the lives and love affair of 2 people - Clare and Henry. What is extraordinary about them is that they first meet when Clare is 6 and Henry is 36, but they marry when Clare is 22 and Henry 30. Impossible you would think, except Henry suffers from an extremely rare chromosomal condition that causes him to time travel, spontaneously and without warning, arriving naked and wary in unknown destinations. As you can imagine, this causes a few problems for their relationship, and some puzzling paradigms for the reader. For example, when Clare and Henry meet in 'real time', she has already met him several times during her childhood, but as he has not yet time traveled to meet her, he has no idea who she is. Clare later gives him a list of dates and times when he time traveled to her, so that the first time he meets her (aged 6), he can give young Clare the list, so that when she grows up she can give it to Henry, so he can give it to her...and so on.

Personally, I didn't find the changes in time too hard to cope with as Niffenegger always lists Henry and Clare's respective ages at the beginning of each section. Therefore, if Henry is 8 years older than Clare, they are in 'real time', anything else and he is time traveling. If you do find it confusing at first, persist, it's worth it. It's an incredible premise and I wish I'd thought of it myself, but I don't think anyone could have written it more beautifully and personally than Niffenegger.

There's an incredibly poignant section where they are trying to have a baby, and I still don't know how I feel about the last bit, but I won't tell you any more, you'll have to read it for yourselves.