The Time Travellers Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)

This is one of those rare genre-crossing pieces - science fiction combined with a love story. The book is quite slow to get going, but if you fight your way through the first 50 or so pages, as introduction, this develops into a fascinating story. The book describes the developing relationship between a young woman and a man who is an accidental time-traveller, dragged back and forth in time at the whim of a genetic problem. In standard science fiction, time travel is generally viewed as a liberating experience, but this book describes a darker side of time travel, where there is no control. This is reminiscent of Ian Watson's short story "The Very Slow Time Machine", but with a much stronger link to reality, with the science fiction here linked to (a potential) reality. And, although the scenes shift backwards and forwards in time, the characters develop and grow as if the story was unfolding chronologically.

As the characters develop, we feel the pain and embarrassment from situations that arise from accidental time travel, which carries the book towards its conclusions. Unfortunately, the conclusions is foretold somewhat prematurely, which lessens the impact of the ending. Otherwise, an excellent example of an unusual combination of genres.