The Time Traveler's Wife is the most enjoyable novel I've read in more than a year — at least since Replay in early 2004. Like Replay, this novel plays with time travel, but instead of reliving a portion of his life over and over, the protagonist here experiences "episodes" in which he drops out of his natural timeline and pops up in a different time and place. The episodes typically last between a few minutes and a couple of hours, and they often occur in a time and place that is significant to his life.

The novel chronicles the relationship between Henry, the time traveler, and Clare, the titular wife. Because of Henry's chrono-impairment, he first meets Clare when he is 28 and Clare is 20. Clare, however, first met Henry when she was 6 and Henry was 36. It sounds confusing, but the success of the novel rests on Niffenegger's considerable ability to weave the frequent discontinuities of time and point of view into a steadily progressing narrative. She excels at slowly disbursing key plot elements and revealing both the rules of the novel's universe and their consequences. There's a tremendous sense of suspense and forward motion as various episodes are told from one point of view and then later from another, and there are big payoffs when the full meaning of earlier events becomes clear. The novel is humorous, erotic, tragic, suspenseful, and touching, and the prose is clever but seemingly effortless.

I can think of only one sour note in the entire affair, a very short chapter that occurs on the morning of September 11, 2001. It is the only event of historical significance referenced in the novel, and there's absolutely no reason for it. The novel would have been better if those 2-3 pages had simply been excised. That, however, is a microscopic criticism of what otherwise is a nearly perfect novel.

Highly recommended.