Since its publication in 2003, The Time Traveler’s Wife has challenged the confines of genre. It is a fusion of postmodernism, speculative fiction, and romance.

The premise—that a man can move around in time—is fantastical. We see this when Henry visits himself as a child. Or when Clare has sex with a time-traveling Henry while the present day Henry sleeps beside her. These events require the reader to put their sense of reality aside to accept the book’s version of what’s real.

The novel takes place in the real world, rather than an exotic one, and can therefore be classified as low fantasy. Elements of the otherworldly merge with the everyday: Though Henry is a time traveler, he exists in a familiar setting. He works at a library to support himself, goes to bars, and, other than time traveling, is very much human.

The novel is speculative. According to Derrick Craigie of Southern New Hampshire University, speculative fiction “‘incorporates elements where the author is creating their own history (and) lore […] ‘Something that is recognizable to us in terms of society or a culture or a history but is created within their imagination.’” (“

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