Time Traveler's Wife

Summary from the Publisher...

A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger's cinematic storytelling that makes the novel's unconventional chronology so vibrantly triumphant.

Discussion Questions

In The Time Traveler's Wife, the characters meet each other at various times during their lifetime. How does the author keep all the timelines in order and "on time"?
Although Henry does the time traveling, Clare is equally impacted. How does she cope with his journeys and does she ultimately accept them?
How does the writer introduce the reader to the concept of time travel as a realistic occurrence? Does she succeed?
Henry's life is disrupted on multiple levels by spontaneous time travel. How does his career as a librarian offset his tumultuous disappearances? Why does that job appeal to Henry?
Henry and Clare know each other for years before they fall in love as adults. How does Clare cope with the knowledge that at a young age she knows that Henry is the man she will eventually marry?
The Time Traveler's Wife is ultimately an enduring love story. What trials and tribulations do Henry and Clare face that are the same as or different from other "normal" relationships?
How does their desire for a child affect their relationship?
The book is told from both Henry and Clare's perspectives. What does this add to the story?
Do you think the ending of the novel is satisfactory?
Though history there have been dozens of mediums used for time travel in literature. Please site examples and compare The Time Traveler's Wife to the ones with which you are familiar.
Despite the tear-jerking and heart-wrenching nature of the story, did you find the novel was also positive and uplifting in some way? Or did you find it unremittingly bleak?
Do you think Niffenegger is trying to get across any kind of message by playing with our linear sense of time in the way that she does?
Did you have any problems with Henry and Clare's relationship? Are there any points in the story where you dislike either of their characters?
What did you make of Niffenegger's unusual narrative structure?
'His forty-third year. His small time's end. His time - Who saw Infinity through the countless cracks in the blank skin of things, and died of it.'(A.S. Byatt, Possession, quoted on page 494). Consider Niffenegger's use of quotations and epigrams throughout the book. What do they add to the novel, and what do you find significant about this one in particular?
To what extent do you believe in Henry's time travelling? Does it ever seem unconvincing to you, or do you think Niffenegger manages to keep us with her throughout?
On the novel's first page Clare declares, "I wait for Henry." In what way does this define her character, and how is the theme of waiting developed throughout the book?
Just as Clare is defined by her waiting, so Henry is defined by his unpredictable comings and goings. That- along with his hard drinking and proclivities for stealing and beating people up- might be described as stereotypically masculine behavior, just as waiting might be called stereotypically feminine. What keeps these characters from being stereotypes? In what ways does the author, Audrey Niffenegger, give them depth and nuance? For example, at what points in the book do Henry and Clare reverse roles?
Niffenegger portrays Henry's time-traveling as the result of a genetic disorder, which is explained at some length later on. How plausible is this explanation- not from a scientific point of view, but from a dramatic or literary one? Do you think that Henry's condition requires an explanation?
How has Henry's personality been shaped by his bouts of chrono-displacement? How does his time-traveling affect Clare? In addition, how is Clare affected by meeting her future husband when she is 6, and seeing him repeatedly throughout her childhood and adolescence before they become lovers? How does the author manage to make their relationship seem eccentric- and even enchanted- rather than sinister?
What is the particular significance of Henry's job as a librarian? What connection do you see between his choice of career and his childhood fascination with the Field Museum (pp. 27-36)?
Along with his frequent trips backward and forward in time, the critical event in Henry's early life is the hideous death of his mother, which he witnesses as a child and revisits compulsively as an adult (pp. 110-14). How has this event helped shape him, and how does it foreshadow other events in the novel?
How does the author manage her novel's fantastically intricate time scheme? For example, where in her narrative does she relate the same incident from different perspectives in order to supply missing information? How does she foreshadow such developments as Ingrid Carmichel's suicide, the birth of Alba DeTamble, and Henry's death?
Among the curiosities of the book is the way chrono-displacement occasionally causes its protagonists to split and double. At the age of 9 Henry is taught pickpocketing by his 27-year-old self (pp. 50-6); Henry returns to his 33-year-old wife after making love to her on her 18th birthday (pp. 402-414). After Henry has a vasectomy at the age of 37, Clare becomes pregnant by a 33-year-old "surrogate" (pp. 363-5). How do Henry and Clare view their younger and older selves? Why, for one thing, aren't they ever jealous of them? And what are this novel's implications about the relationship between time and the self?
In theory Henry's time-traveling should make him omniscient- at least as far as his own timeline is concerned- ut Clare knows things about him that he does not. What accounts for this? What role does the characters' knowledge- and the gaps in their knowledge- play in the novel?
Closely related to the theme of foreknowledge is the idea of free will. Does Henry's chrono-instability give him a freedom that Clare lacks, or does it make him more powerless? Discuss Henry's observation that "there is only free will when you are in time, in the present" (p. 58).
When Henry asks her to describe her artwork, Clare tells him that it's about birds and longing (p. 15). How do the themes of birds- along with wings and flight- and longing figure elsewhere in this book?
What is the List that Henry makes for Clare, and how does it give the book dramatic momentum? Does Niffenegger employ other devices to similar effect? One of the things that makes a story suspenseful is the reader's sense that events are reaching a climax, that time is running out. How is Niffenegger able to impart this sense to her readers, given Henry's seemingly inexhaustible supply of time?
Both Gomez and Celia warn Clare about Henry. "This guy would chew you up and spit you out- He's not at all what you need," says Gomez (p. 420). Can we simply chalk those warnings up to jealousy, or might the observers be correct? Is Henry more ruthless and amoral than he appears to Clare? How do you interpret Henry's statement: "I'm not exactly the man she's known from earliest childhood. I'm a close approximation she is guiding surreptitiously toward a me that exists in her mind's eye" (p. 149)?
How does Henry and Clare's relationship change following their marriage? How is it affected by their desire for a child?
Would you call The Time Traveler's Wife a comedy or a tragedy, or are such classifications relevant to a work that plays havoc with time and allows one character to appear periodically after his death?
How does the author use time travel as a metaphor: for love, for loss and absence, for fate, for aging, for death? To what extent are Clare and Henry a "normal" couple?
"He isn't calibrated to bring peace to anyone's life"? Henry's father cannot understand how Clare can love Henry. Discuss Henry's character throughout the novel. When Clare finally finds Henry in real time, what is he like? When do you think he is at his most likeable?
Time travel is a science fiction concept that has been used many times before in fiction - from The Wizard of Oz, to HG Wells The Time Machine.... Discuss other famous uses of time travel in books or film. How does Niffenegger's vision of time travel differ?
Henry's time travelling often takes him back to emotionally important events in his life. Discuss how it must feel to keep on returning to both tragic and happy events of your life?
The author uses the 1st person narrative for both Henry and Clare. How do their different perspectives add to the balance of the novel?
Many of the characters love intensely without hope - Henry's father and his dead wife, Ingrid - Henry's suicidal ex-girlfriend.... What do you think of the author's portrayal of love?
"Well think. You go to the future, you do something, you come back to the present. Then the thing that you did is part of your past. So that's probably inevitable, too." Henry and Henry p58. How is free will and fate presented in The Time Traveler's Wife? Can Henry change anything about his future?
"You are making me different' - Clare, p78 Clare grows up with an unnatural knowledge of what her future will be- how different does that make her from an ordinary girl? Is she able to make her own choices in life to alter her destiny?
"We are often insane with happiness. We are also very unhappy for reasons neither of us can do anything about it." - p411 Henry 41 Clare 18 How convincing is the portrayal of Henry and Clare's relationship and their attempts to have children? What are the additional stresses that they suffer that an ordinary marriage doesn't?
What do you think the significance of Book 2's title " A Drop of Blood in a Bowl of Milk"?
"I have given you a life of waiting..... Stop waiting and be free." p503 Henry's letter to Clare. What is the remaining years of Clare's life like? Does she wait? Do you think Henry should have told Clare that he sees her again?

Other Resources

Walter, Natasha. "Back to the Future: Natasha Walter Enjoys an Origianal Look at Relationships - Through Time Travel." The Guardian (London, England) 31 Jan. 2004: 28.
Changnon, Greg. "Books: The Reading Room: A Guide for Book Clubs: Couple's Encounters Cross Barriers of Time." Atlanta Journal-Constitution 27 June 2004: K5.
Zambreno, Kate. "Books: Woman on the Edge of Time; Audrey Niffenegger is This Year's Cinderella Publishing Story." The Independent (London, Englahd) 23 Jan. 2004: 28.

Updated: 12/28/2004

Time Traveler's Wife

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