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Completed
26 June 2007
Title
The Time Traveler's Wife
Author
Audrey Niffenegger
Published
2005
Quote
"Im in the Meadow, waiting. I wait slightly outside the clearing, naked, because the clothes Clare keeps for me in a box under a stone are not there; the box isnt there either, so I am thankful that the afternoon is fine, early September, perhaps, in some unidentified year. I hunker down in the tall grass. I consider. The fact that there is no box full of clothes means that I have arrived in a time before Clare and I have met. Perhaps Clare isnt even born yet. This has happened before, and its a pain; I miss Clare and I spend the time hiding naked in the Meadow, not daring to show myself in the neighborhood of Clares family. I think longingly of the apple trees at the western edge of the Meadow. At this time of year there ought to be apples, small and sour and munched by deer, but edible. I hear the screen door slam and I peer above the grass. A child is running, pell mell, and as it comes down the path through the waving grass my heart twists and Clare bursts into the clearing."
Review
I reluctantly ploughed through all 518 pages.

This book was given to me by my knitter friend, Liz, a.k.a. Crazy Liz.

I should have known that something was up, because when Liz handed me the book, she said, "Take this book. It's terrible."

I don't know why I feel compelled to read a book, any book, that is given to me. Liz warned me. It's a bad book. And yet, I force-fed myself 518 pages of it.

Just as an illustration of the power of marketing, read this blurb, which comes straight off the dust jacket:

"This is the extraordinary love story of Clare and Henry who met when Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry suffers from a rare condition where his genetic clock periodically resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. In the face of this force they can neither prevent nor control, Henry and Clares struggle to lead normal lives is both intensely moving and entirely unforgettable."

Oh boy. What bull. The only thing "unforgettable" about this book is how completely awful it is. Really, it's terrible. Just like Liz said.



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