It is a love story about Henry, a man with a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel unpredictably, and about Clare, his wife, an artist who has to cope with his frequent absences.

Using alternating first-person perspectives, the novel tells the stories of Henry DeTamble (born 1963), a librarian at the Newberry Library in Chicago, as he visits a child who will later become his wife, Clare Anne Abshire (born 1971), an artist who makes paper sculptures, with the aid of his uncontrolled ability to time travel.

Soon after their marriage, Clare begins to have trouble bringing a pregnancy to term because of the genetic anomaly Henry is presumably passing on to the fetus.

However, a version of Henry from the past visits Clare one night and they make love; she subsequently gives birth to a daughter named Alba.

When he is 43, during what is to be his last year of life, Henry time travels to a Chicago parking garage on a frigid winter night where he is unable to find shelter.

As a result of the hypothermia and frostbite he suffers while sleeping in the parking garage, his feet are amputated when he returns to the present time.

On New Year's Eve 2006, Henry time travels into the middle of the Michigan woods in 1984 and is accidentally shot by Clare's brother, a scene foreshadowed earlier in the novel.

"[4] Other authors whom Niffenegger has cited as influencing the book include Richard Powers, David Foster Wallace, Henry James, and Dorothy Sayers.

"[7] Niffenegger began writing the novel in 1997; the last scene, in which an aged Clare is waiting for Henry, was written first, because it is the story's focal point.

Responding to comments from readers of early drafts of the manuscript, Niffenegger reorganized the narrative so that it largely followed Clare's timeline.

"[9] Reviewers have found The Time Traveler's Wife difficult to classify generically: some categorize it as science fiction, others as a romance.

[2] She has said that she based Clare and Henry's romance on the "cerebral coupling" of Dorothy Sayers's characters Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane.

Instead, as critic Marc Mohan describes, the novel "uses time travel as a metaphor to explain how two people can feel as if they've known each other their entire lives".

[17] The love between Henry and Clare is expressed in a variety of ways, including through an analysis and history of the couple's sex life.

[17][18] While much of the novel shows Henry and Clare falling in love, the end is darker and "time travel becomes a means for representing arbitrariness, transience, [and] plain bad luck", according to The Boston Globe's Judith Maas.

[19] As Andrew Billen argues in The Times, "The book may even serve as a feminist analysis of marriage as a partnership in which only the male is conceded the privilege of absence.

After this interlude, he returns to his own time and his own Clare, who says, Henry's been gone for almost twenty-four hours now, and as usual I'm torn between thinking obsessively about when and where he might be and being pissed at him for not being here ...

[4] A December 2003 article in The Observer reported that although "a tiny minority of American reviewers" felt that the novel was "gimmicky", it was still "a publishing sensation".

[12] Michelle Griffin of The Age noted that although Henry "is custom-designed for the fantasy lives of bookish ladies", his flaws, particularly his "violent, argumentative, depressive" nature, make him a strong, well-rounded character.

[26] Charles DeLint wrote in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction that one of Niffenegger's "greatest accomplishments" in the novel was her ability to convey the emotional growth of Clare and Henry in character arcs while at the same time alternating their perspectives.

While Griffin praised the plot and concept as "clever", she argued that Niffenegger's writing is usually "pedestrian" and the story at times contrived.

[26] Heidi Darroch of the National Post agreed, contending that the story has an excess of overwrought emotional moments "which never quite add up to a fully developed plot".

[12] Writing in The Chicago Tribune, Carey Harrison praised the originality of the novel, specifically the intersection of child-bearing and time travel.

[28] Amidon also criticized the novel's "overall clumsiness", writing that Niffenegger is "a ham-fisted stylist, long-winded and given to sudden eruptions of cliche".

[42] HighBridge also produced an unabridged version in 2003, which is twelve hours long and narrated by Maggi-Meg Reed and Christopher Burns; their performance has been described as "sincere and passionate".

The film rights for The Time Traveler's Wife were optioned by Brad Pitt's production company Plan B Entertainment, in association with New Line Cinema, before the novel was even published.

[44] The adaptation was written by Bruce Joel Rubin and directed by Robert Schwentke, and stars Rachel McAdams as Clare and Eric Bana as Henry.

[49] In July 2018, HBO secured the rights to adapt the novel into a television series of the same name, to be written by Steven Moffat.

A stage musical based on the book was announced to be in development in March 2021, which is due to premiere in the UK in late 2021 or early 2022.

[53] In response to the announcement, Niffeneger revealed on Twitter she did not know about the project then clarified that the theatrical rights belonged to Warner Bros.[54] The stage musical premiered at Storyhouse in Chester from 30 September 2022.