Audrey Niffenegger’s literary agent tells the story of how he had so much trouble getting prospective publishers to read the manuscript for The Time Traveler’s Wife. Part of the problem, he says, was how he was forced to describe the plot in a single sentence: a bright but troubled librarian, Henry, travels through time to visit his lover, Clare, as she ages from a young child to adult. (And this was him trying to make it sound good.) Was it science fiction? Romance? Pedophilia? Publishers couldn’t tell. Turns out it’s none of the above, and yet so much more. It’s a rich tale that forces us to extract our idea of love from any sense of time, place, custom or convention.