[Book Review] The Time Traveller's Wife

 

Audrey Niffenegger's 'The Time Traveller's Wife' is a science fiction with the dose of time travelling. The cover would initially look quite confusing but later when you get on with the novel you'll get a hang of the idea that the author depicts countless times throughout the novel. 

The story deals with two main characters - Henry DeTamble and Claire Abshire. Henry knows that Claire is the girl of his life because of his ability to time travel. Along his paranormal journey, he discovers secrets about his own life. 

The plot is quite jumbled up because of the time travelling. It is nonlinear throughout the novel. Sometimes we have two Henrys from different age and timeline. Personally, I felt it quite hard to follow initially but later on things began to get interesting when the puzzle pieces began to fit. The overall storyline is dull; nothing to be much excited about when you take away the element of time travelling from it. I do appreciate the effort the author must have taken to write in nonlinear form. It's really hard and tiring but the novel was worth it. The Epilogue was a tad bit unnecessary I think. It felt like the author wanted to deliberately play with time travelling a little longer. Overall, would recommend this for one time read if you are a science fiction fan and looking for a little extraordinary something. It won't disappoint you if you read it without any great expectations. 

[Book Review] Landline

"Landline" by Rainbow Rowell is the kind of the book you want to read if you want some paranormal activity in everyday life. The cover is really cool as well as dull at the same time. The yellow rotary phone amidst the grey background gives you the gloomy interesting touch, at least that's what I thought. At first sight, you may end up with the same conclusion as me that this book is another teenage high school romantic drama but no it's not. 

"Landline" tells the story of Georgie, a TV drama writer, her husband Neal and her best friend Seth. A week before Christmas, Georgie encounters a weird old yellow rotary phone that changes her broken relations and her life. 

This is the first book of Rainbow Rowell that I read and I really liked this. The plot was really predictable after the climax but the writing made it worthwhile. By the end of the last chapter I was excited and anxious as much as Georgie to see her family. The whole yellow rotary landline thing was interesting but I expected some kind of explanation at the end but I didn't get any. Teeny bit disappointed but I decided to mark the rotary landline under paranormal activity and also the whole plot takes place around Christmas. Maybe Rowell wanted it to be a Christmas miracle or something and who am I to question Christmas miracles. Or maybe it was because the novel is a Fiction ;)
The characters were memorable. I can still see Neal's parenthesis dimples. Another thing that I really liked was that the author managed to take away all the things from Georgie when she was looking for something to hold on to her present life. The plot was simple and the writing was easy and compact. Overall it was a good read if you keep your expectations on par.