What's the general consensus in the Science Fiction community on Niffenegger's book "The Time Traveller's Wife?

I thought it was a fun book. I think that it's best viewed as popular fiction rather than science fiction. Although it has a charming and moving take on the age-old sci-fi time travel story, and a fascinating approach to the question of predestination, the human story of the two lovers is much more interesting than the science.

Every time it gets close to "science", it veers into dangerous territory, because the author isn't a scientist and doesn't really know how scientists work. If I were a doctor approached with somebody who demonstrated time travel, I'd insist on bringing in a physicist rather than setting about seeking a cure. It would be the most important thing to happen to science since, well, ever.

Which is totally unimportant to the story, and in fact I think the book would have been better off if it left actual scientists out of it entirely. Except for the truly old-school hard sci-fi authors, science fiction writers are best telling human stories rather than technological or scientific ones. I have to admit I found the sex scenes kind of tedious, but between them I found a lot of really fascinating characters.

In particular I liked the way the artist Clare was presented: her art seemed fully fleshed out. In fact, I have the sneaking suspicion that most of the characters are based on people the author knows. The lead characters have a three-dimensionality that the secondary characters lack, and I can't help but think that she's at her best when she's cribbing from real life.

I wasn't nearly as thrilled with it as the reviews have made it out to be. It was a good book, perhaps even a really good book. I'll admit a personal gripe: it always bugs me when the popular press gets a hold of a topic that used to be dismissed as "sci-fi pulp" and then overpraises it as "highly original" when sci-fi writers have been doing it for years.

I found Cormac McCarthy's The Road literally unreadable for that reason: I was so angry at the blurbs declaring its innovation, when I felt like I'd read the story a hundred times, that I wasn't able to give the book a fair reading. Another particular note: I read it as an audiobook, which is always a different experience from reading it in your head. Although the readers (especially the male reader) did a fantastic job, I think this one may be better read on paper.

The use of two voices to represent the two narrators was brilliant, but it meant that characters common to both threads sounded different, when they'd have sounded the same in your head if you'd read it on paper.