The Time Traveler's Wife
Audrey Niffenegger's innovative debut, The Time Traveler's Wife, is the story of Clare, a beautiful art student, and Henry, an adventuresome librarian, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-three and Henry thirty-one. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity in his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.
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What you might want to know about The Time Traveler's Wife
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Henry DeTamble is a Chicago librarian whose genetic condition drops him out of his timeline at random, often to moments around the artist Clare Abshire. The book braids his timeline with hers, beginning the day a six-year-old Clare meets a naked older Henry in a meadow behind her parents' house.
Yes. A 2009 film adaptation directed by Robert Schwentke and starring Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams was released. HBO also released a 2022 limited series adaptation written by Steven Moffat.
Yes. The Time Traveler's Wife is widely considered emotionally devastating. The premise of involuntary time travel through a relationship lends itself to grief and loss themes throughout. Audrey Niffenegger's prose is gentle but the cumulative effect lands hard.
The Time Traveler's Wife was written by Audrey Niffenegger, published in 2003 by Vintage Canada.
The Time Traveler's Wife is 546 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Time Traveler's Wife takes most readers 8 to 12 hours to finish.
The Time Traveler's Wife is a standalone novel by Audrey Niffenegger, not part of a series.
The Time Traveler's Wife is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
