![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: The Time Traveler's Wife
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Number of Pages: 518 pages
Book Number/Goal: 4/50 for 2011
My Rating: 2/5
Jacket Summary: When Henry meets Clare, he is twenty-eight and she is twenty. He is a hip librarian; she is a beautiful art student. Henry has never met Clare before; Clare has known Henry since she was six...
Review: I wanted to read this because it's an interesting idea and I like time-travel stuff. This guy can time-travel, but it's not something he can control or something that he needs any sort of device for. It's a genetic thing that causes him to randomly travel in time (and space as well; he doesn't just end up in the same place but a different time), especially when he's stressed, etc.
Anyway, so. The idea was cool, but I can't say I was that fond of the book itself. I don't find it "dizzyingly romantic" as the blurb on the back cover says, but neither did I find it creepy as I've heard some people say (he often meets his wife when she was a kid and teenager, but I didn't get a creepy vibe from that myself).
I might have given it a three for the story, but it was so overwhelmingly white, straight, and heteronormative that I kept getting annoyed. Everyone is white except for a handful of minor characters, who are all described in skeevy ways and are total stereotypes. There are two black women, one of whom is an angry lesbian with dreads and the other is Clare's family's cook. There is the Korean woman, Mrs Kim, who practically raised Henry when his mother died, and also takes care of his father. Other than the angry lesbian, the only other queer character is a friend of Henry's who's there for a few pages and of course has AIDS.
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Number of Pages: 518 pages
Book Number/Goal: 4/50 for 2011
My Rating: 2/5
Jacket Summary: When Henry meets Clare, he is twenty-eight and she is twenty. He is a hip librarian; she is a beautiful art student. Henry has never met Clare before; Clare has known Henry since she was six...
Review: I wanted to read this because it's an interesting idea and I like time-travel stuff. This guy can time-travel, but it's not something he can control or something that he needs any sort of device for. It's a genetic thing that causes him to randomly travel in time (and space as well; he doesn't just end up in the same place but a different time), especially when he's stressed, etc.
Anyway, so. The idea was cool, but I can't say I was that fond of the book itself. I don't find it "dizzyingly romantic" as the blurb on the back cover says, but neither did I find it creepy as I've heard some people say (he often meets his wife when she was a kid and teenager, but I didn't get a creepy vibe from that myself).
I might have given it a three for the story, but it was so overwhelmingly white, straight, and heteronormative that I kept getting annoyed. Everyone is white except for a handful of minor characters, who are all described in skeevy ways and are total stereotypes. There are two black women, one of whom is an angry lesbian with dreads and the other is Clare's family's cook. There is the Korean woman, Mrs Kim, who practically raised Henry when his mother died, and also takes care of his father. Other than the angry lesbian, the only other queer character is a friend of Henry's who's there for a few pages and of course has AIDS.