(May 7, 2006) Good read. I really liked it. I haven’t read a lot of time-travel novels (just the Diana Gabaldon books), but I feel like I know the genre from movies (Groundhog Day, Time Bandits, Austin Powers, Back to the Future, Lola Rennt, Peggy Sue Got Married, Somewhere in Time, Terminator, Prisoner of Azkaban) and TV (Quantum Leap, Mr. Peabody, Star Trek, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits), and I think that this was a very innovative approach to time-travelling. I like how she schemed it all out, so that for a while Henry knows more than Clare, then Clare knows more than Henry, and at almost every encounter one of them is surprised and one of them knows what’s going on. Despite this constant dislocation, both always know some of the “back story” and can guide the other through. The characters are very likable, and they do the harmless things you’d do if you had this kind of relationship with time -- they get a lottery win, they play the stock market, they get prepared for September 11th. It’s clever and imaginative. It gets a bit gruesome at the end, but Niffenegger must have felt that she couldn’t wind up the whole thing too happily.
-- Caravaggio, Narcissus
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