The Time Traveler’s Wife
Audrey Niffenegger
published 2003
546 pages
On the surface, Henry and Clare Detamble are a normal couple living in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. Henry works at the Newberry Library and Clare creates abstract paper art, but the cruel reality is that Henry has “Chrono Displacement disorder” and is a prisoner of time, disappearing randomly and finding himself in the past or future, usually at a time or place of importance in his life. It drops him naked and vulnerable into another decade, wearing an age-appropriate face. In fact, it’s not unusual for Henry to run into the other Henry and help him out of a jam. Imagine Clare’s astonishment at seeing Henry dropped into her parents’ meadow when she was only six. The narration alternates between Henry and Clare’s points of view.
