The Time Traveller's Wife

An easy read but a difficult book to review. It's not that the book is bad, lots of folks are really going to like this book. Much like a good horoscope, there's a little of everything here, enough for people to recognise themselves and thrum along with the narrative. It's well written, the characters are fleshed out with enough flaws to make them seem real and the pacing of the book is well suited to the basic story. It is post-modern in its flow, creative in its approach and challenging enough to make folks feel good about reading something they can consider to be literature.

I really hated it.

There are very few non-ranty ways of approaching this. This is a romantic fantasy novel dressed up as serious writing, and cleverly so. That doesn't prevent the story from providing what is basically an escapist love story that indulges every romantic stereotype out there. Revolting is a strong word, strong but appropriate. It is as if the author read every self-help book out there on how to have a healthy relationship, stole the basic vocabulary, and then wrote a Cinderella-type story with archaic gender roles and Freudian overtones that violates the most basic real-world experiences of actual interaction. (ok, that was ranty anyways, I tried).