Things I Like - Books

The Time Traveler’s Wife is one of my favorite books. This first novel from Chicago-based Audrey Niffenegger is your basic boy meets girl love story with one major twist – the boy, Henry, is chronologically challenged. With no control over his random movement through time, Henry lives his life out of order – popping in and out of his own and other people’s lives. He is an adult when he meets Clare, his future wife – she is only 6 at the time. They meet again when she is 20 but he doesn’t know her, all of his trips to her childhood occur after this point. I know, it doesn’t make any sense but believe me, it all comes together, and beautifully.

I didn’t run across TTTW until it was out in paperback (some time in 2004) and I’ve been eagerly awaiting Audrey’s next book ever since. I was very excited to learn last week that my wait is almost over! Her Fearful Symmetry is due out in October this year.
Here's a quick synopsis:

Julia and Valentina Poole are normal American teenagers - normal, at least, for identical 'mirror' twins who have no interest in college or jobs or possibly anything outside their cozy suburban home. But everything changes when they receive notice that an aunt whom they didn't know existed has died and left them her flat in an apartment block overlooking Highgate Cemetery in London. They feel that at last their own lives can begin ...but have no idea that they've been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, from the obsessive-compulsive crossword setter who lives above them to their aunt's mysterious and elusive lover who lives below them, and even to their aunt herself, who never got over her estrangement from the twins' mother - and who can't even seem to quite leave her flat. With Highgate Cemetery itself a character and echoes of Henry James and Charles Dickens, "Her Fearful Symmetry" is a delicious and deadly twenty-first-century ghost story about Niffenegger's familiar themes of love, loss and identity.
~Waterstones

Even more good news – the long awaited movie of TTTW is scheduled for release on August 14th. Starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana, the movie is set and was filmed in Chicago – even better!



via Omnivoracious