Life Out of Order by Audrey Niffenegger: Ambitious follow-up to the Time Traveler’s Wife

Life Out of Order

Author: Audrey Niffenegger

ISBN-13: 9781787336766

Publisher: Jonathan Cape

Guideline Price: £ 22; 560pp

Fourteen years after her debut novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, sold nine million copies globally and became a Hollywood movie, Niffenegger has finally written its sequel.

The sci-fi romance that catapulted the author into literary superstardom introduced the world to Henry, a man born with a genetic disorder that makes him a reluctant time traveller, and his long-suffering great love, Clare.

The debut had depth, artistry and literary sensibilities that elevated its status to become one of the books of the decade. Niffenegger is a professor, a visual artist and deep thinker with an eccentric creative impulse that was further evidenced in the work that followed, such as Her Fearful Symmetry and the creepy illustrated gothic novel, The Three Incestuous Sisters.

As such, if, as sales suggest, the devotees of her debut have not been reading Niffenegger in the intervening years, they may be in for a shock with the sprawling scope of Life Out of Order – all 560 pages of it.

The novel is focused on Henry and Clare’s daughter, Alba, who has inherited her father’s genetic predilection for time travel. Unlike her father, however, Alba travels forwards to an increasingly dystopian Chicago as the US descends further into a depressing chaos as a consequence of climate change and AI escalation.

The novel is told from multiple points of view, is structurally ambitious, and wayward in its thematic propulsion. Those who reread The Time Traveler’s Wife first benefit from the memory aid, as the full cast of characters is carried forward. What may be frustrating for fans of Henry and Clare, however, is that embedded in this more complicated narrative is the story they most desire: what happened to their favourite lovers from literature, and what became of their daughter?

Niffenegger asks readers to work hard to unlock that version of the sequel. Those who have an appreciation for Niffenegger’s literary sensibilities, her lyrical expressionism and thoughtful meditations on destiny will have the patience to travel with her through Life Out of Order.

It is inevitable, however, that many readers will find it challenging. That the writer is unafraid to embrace the authentic evolution of her own artistic and intellectual practice, however, should be admired. This is an author with the courage of her convictions.

Helen Cullen is the author of The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually and the forthcoming Iseult