Read it.

It is amazing. Beyond amazing.

And if you have read it, tell me how much you love it.


p.s. I'm not sure if it would be classifies as a "chick book" or not. I know like 6 guys who have read it though, so it's either a "unisex book" or they are comfortable with their sexuality. Or they are gay.

What's it about?

Judging by the title, it seems like it would be a Nate-y book.

Because I am lazy, I got this from Amazon (who got it from Publishers Weekly):

This highly original first novel won the largest advance San Francisco-based MacAdam/Cage had ever paid, and it was money well spent. Niffenegger has written a soaring love story illuminated by dozens of finely observed details and scenes, and one that skates nimbly around a huge conundrum at the heart of the book: Henry De Tamble, a rather dashing librarian at the famous Newberry Library in Chicago, finds himself unavoidably whisked around in time. He disappears from a scene in, say, 1998 to find himself suddenly, usually without his clothes, which mysteriously disappear in transit, at an entirely different place 10 years earlier-or later. During one of these migrations, he drops in on beautiful teenage Clare Abshire, an heiress in a large house on the nearby Michigan peninsula, and a lifelong passion is born. The problem is that while Henry's age darts back and forth according to his location in time, Clare's moves forward in the normal manner, so the pair are often out of sync. But such is the author's tenderness with the characters, and the determinedly ungimmicky way in which she writes of their predicament (only once do they make use of Henry's foreknowledge of events to make money, and then it seems to Clare like cheating) that the book is much more love story than fantasy. It also has a splendidly drawn cast, from Henry's violinist father, ruined by the loss of his wife in an accident from which Henry time-traveled as a child, to Clare's odd family and a multitude of Chicago bohemian friends. The couple's daughter, Alba, inherits her father's strange abilities, but this is again handled with a light touch; there's no Disney cuteness here. Henry's foreordained end is agonizing, but Niffenegger has another card up her sleeve, and plays it with poignant grace. It is a fair tribute to her skill and sensibility to say that the book leaves a reader with an impression of life's riches and strangeness rather than of easy thrills.

That review doesn't do it justice. It also makes it sound a bit more lovey dovey that it is. But I don't feel like writing one myself.

And no, Nate thought it looked/sounded dumb. :/

I didn't think it was a 'chick book' at all. It was just a really great book. I can't quite figure out what I want to say about it but I really loved it. It makes time travel as something not so miraculous and shiny like you would see on the tv. Amazing yet it comes with a price. Silly little things like his fillings not able to go with him. Fascinating stuff.

The main reason I quoted Amazon up there was because I was lazy. The other reason is because I couldn't think of exactly what to say either. I love the book. It made me cry, but it wasn't an "omg I'm a girl and I'm reading chick lit" thing. When I was done with the book (which I didn't bother putting down until I was done), I just kinda sat there like "wtf just happened," but in a good way. The ending would have disappointed me if it were the ending of any other book, but it fit quite nicely. I love and hate that it wasn't the happiest of endings.

Yeah you realise a time traveller could never grow old with his love in the conventional sense. Though he is present at nearly every step, just in the wrong order. He gets just about everything you could want from a relationship but at the same time he is a little cheated. He never gets to feel contented with his life and what he has achieved in it with her. He even ends up parenting in a different time from Claire. It was the so near and yet so far feeling of it all that made me a bit sniffly.