The Time Travelers Wife

An Unconventional Book Report.

RCVman Thursday, 19 June, 2008.

I am sitting with my hostel mates in Nice, France discussing literature. They are two Canadian college girls, intelligent, outgoing and on the last leg of a three week jaunt through Europe. I like them both. They remind me of a time when I was young and innocent and in search of some combination of experience, fun, adventure and meaning. I have always found it interesting that this calling to college grads is louder and clearer in Western Europe than other spots. Maybe it is.

We are exchanging top five lists. Music, film, art, cities. We get to literature and I lead with my standard, across all genre picks; Robbins, Kerouac, Stienbeck, Fowels, Heinlein, and yield the floor.

Sallinger, Dickinson, Conrad, Kingsolver, Miller.

Dick, Bukowski, Bronte, Tolkien, Niffenegger.

Niffenegger? I say.

Audrey Niffenegger. The Time Travelers Wife.

My favorite all time book, she says.

News to me. I will assume by the title that it is science fiction?

More of a love story.

Really?

Yeah, and the protagonist has a very rare DNA infliction that causes involuntary time travel, which as you can imagine, causes some rather bizarre situations and circumstances, as he is in love with a woman he can only see occasionally as time travel permits and or restricts. The predestination paradox, too, as it applies to love, life and God, even 9-11.

WOW.

It is SOOOOO good.

I am intrigued, envisioning a combination of Minority Report, Fifty Years of Solitude and Oedipus as they decide that it is time to go meet their friends for dinner.

I bid them an enjoyable evening on the town and grab my iPhone to make this addition:

Read: The Time Travelers Wife by A. Niffenegger.

I humbly suggest you do likewise.