.................The Time Traveler's Wife

.......................by Audrey Niffenegger / Review by Dan O'Connor

. . . . . I found this novel confusing from the very beginning and had to reread the first thirty or so pages, just to follow the storyline. I stuck with it for around that length of time and then decided that it was just too tedious, relative to what I was getting out of it, which wasn't much, to try to pursue the story any further.

. . . . . In asking myself why the general public would embrace this novel to the extent they did, I could only come up with the proposition that perhaps they were enamored by the concept, or got their jollies by fantasizing about the lead female character, Carie, meeting up with her husband at varying relative ages (with him always in the nude), often followed by sexual intercourse.

. . . . . It must be a literary novel, because I couldn't identify a spine to the story. If the right reader, whom I respected and knew on a personal level said, "This is a must-read," I might have trudged on and may still pick it up again at some point in the future. But the ms. just wasn't calling out to me on its own. I dreaded turning another page, so I stopped.

Dan's		Book Review Report Card

Major Character Development
		Henry	OK, so far as I got
		Carie	ditto

Dialogue			ditto

Narration / Prose		First Person / Lead character only	B

Pacing		The story skips around so much and was so confusing that I couldn't grasp what you might call a pace.	C

Storyline Issues
	Continuity	Storyline outline clear and concise?	F
	Drama	I felt no tension or drama in the pages I read. Having Henry appear to a six year old, for example, with him being naked didn't excite, or interest, me.	D
	Character arc	Was classic protagonist character arc present and compelling?	no opinion / I didn't get that far
	Conclusion (AKA The Ending )	Poetic, appropriate, plausible and compelling ?	no idea & don't care

	Social value	Did I learn anything of value, either in terms of knowledge or insight into life?	No

	Author rating	Would I rush out and buy another novel written by this author?	No

Overall rating		Thumbs down. (I was bored.) / Two stars--all for concept. I recognize it as a clever and unique one. i.e., having the husband and wife meet up at disjointed times during their independent lives, even though it didn't appeal to me.	I feel it's unfair to give it an overall grade, since I didn't finish it.

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Time Traveler's Wife Book Review