Literary reviews by Tim Love.
Warning: Rather than reviews, these are often notes in preparation for reviews that were never finished, or pleas for help with understanding pieces. See Litref Reviews - a rationale for details.

Tuesday, 17 January 2006

"The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffernegger (Jonathan Cape, 2004)

I wonder how much one's reaction to this depends on whether one's familiar with Star Trek, Douglas Adams, etc. In those works also, freewill/determinism is "explored", as is the nature of relationships/dialog where person A knows more about person B than person B knows about him/her-self, but cannot say. For me the only novelty was that the use of the SF gimmicks was limited (more like magic realism than reasoned, "realistic" SF) allowing the focus to remain on the implications for relationships (compare "Flowers for Algernon"). It's well written though rather long, considering, and I don't know whether it was exploring or falling for the older-male/young-heroine romantic novel pairing.

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