I may be in touch with my inner hippy but I usually draw the line at reading romance novels: I’m all for Love in a general sense but if the specifics mean reading about some 18th century governess who gets kidnapped by a pirate that looks like Fabio you can leave me out of it, thankyouveryfuckingmuch.

My friend Noel is quite aware of this and pestered me to read The Time Traveler’s Wife anyway, and may Lord Shiva bless him for pestering me until I gave in. What a book. I haven’t been quite so leaky around the eyes over a love story since I watched La Vita é Bella at the tail end of a three day Ecstasy bender.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is the story of Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire, a couple who could register a patent on the phrase “meant to be together”. Clare first meets Henry when she is six years old, Henry first meets Clare when he is thirty six, and it’s pretty much love at first sight for both of them. It might sound like the type of affair that would inspire an anti-paedo campaign from the Daily Mail but the central conceit of the novel – Henry’s genetic disorder that causes him to spontaneously time travel – ensures it’s not as twisted as it sounds. Honest.

In many senses it’s a remarkably straightforward book that charts a love affair from inception to conclusion. But Audrey Niffenegger performs a remarkable literary sleight of hand by weaving fantasy, in the form of Henry’s inadvertent time travelling, throughout. It’s a simple – and at first glance rather silly – premise which rapidly draws you in and sends the story soaring to heights that will make even the most red-blooded, beer-guzzling, hairy-chested bloke feel a twinge of romantic vertigo. If you’ve ever thought “we’ll be together forever”, even for a moment, you’ll respond to this beautiful book.

I’m quite a bit behind the times when it comes to The Time Traveler’s Wife (it was published in 2003) so I’ll leave the gushing there for now, but if your girlfriend has been banging on about this book for months or years and you’ve caved enough to look it up on the Internet let me add my voice to the choir in saying READ IT NOW! If you’ve got the slightest bit of romance in your soul you won’t regret it.