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The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

1985. After the death of her beloved twin brother, Felix, and the breakup with her longtime lover, Nathan, Greta Wells embarks on a radical psychiatric treatment to alleviate her suffocating depression. But the treatment has unexpected effects, and Greta finds herself transported to the lives she might have had if she'd been born in different eras.

During the course of her treatment, Greta cycles between her own time and alternate lives in 1918, where she is a bohemian adulteress, and 1941, which transforms her into a devoted mother and wife. Separated by time and social mores, Greta's three lives are remarkably similar, fraught with familiar tensions and difficult choices. Each reality has its own losses, its own rewards, and each extracts a different price. And the modern Greta learns that her alternate selves are unpredictable, driven by their own desires and needs.

As her final treatment looms, questions arise: What will happen once each Greta learns how to remain in one of the other worlds? Who will choose to stay in which life?

Magically atmospheric, achingly romantic, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells beautifully imagines ""what if"" and wondrously wrestles with the impossibility of what could be.

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    • AudioFile Magazine
      Greta Wells, impaired by grief over her twin brother's death, seeks electroshock therapy as a last resort. Through time travel, each shock treatment causes her to switch places with the Gretas of 1918, 1941, and the present (which is 1985). Narrator Orlagh Cassidy keeps the listener engaged throughout the frequent character switches and the sometimes confusing scenes of time travel. Her subtle narration brings out the beauty of the elegant prose, creating vivid pictures of New York in the three time periods. Cassidy's understated yet emotional character voices complement the story's overall feeling of despair and, later, hope. Listeners will be eager to discover which time period Greta will choose to remain in once the shock therapy is complete. M.M.G. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 15, 2013
      In Greer’s time-traveling fourth novel (following The Story of a Marriage), the eponymous Greta skips between three different eras, and her life is intertwined with the same two characters (and other incarnations of herself) in each. Greta Wells, living in New York City in 1985, is devastated by her twin brother Felix’s death from AIDS and the end of her long-term relationship with Nathan. To treat her crippling depression, she pursues electroconvulsive therapy, which begins a cycle of magical time travel. In 1941, Felix is alive and Nathan is her husband; and in 1918, Nathan is away at war and Felix, though still homosexual, is deeply closeted. As the Greta of 1985 explores these timelines, the versions of herself from 1918 and 1941 also travel to each other’s eras. No timeline is perfect; each offers losses and compensations. Felix’s stories provide an especially moving exploration of the limited choices available to gay people throughout history. The Gretas have surprisingly little solidarity, intruding into each other’s lives without warning or permission. While Greer too often skimps on the period details that can give time travel stories a sense of reality, the novel’s central questions—how does experience change us, and which relationships are worth sacrificing for—work to bridge its chronological jumps. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit.

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  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

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