The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells

You know I like my mystical realism and my time-travel novels. This is a fabulous one. I will say that it started a little slowly for me, but once I got into it I couldn't put it down.

Greta Wells is a 30-something woman living in NYC in 1985. Her twin brother has just died of AIDS and her long-time lover has left her for another woman, so she is understandably depressed. When her doctor suggests electric shock therapy, she figures it can't hurt and gives it a try. Little does she know how it will change her lives (yes, I said lives). Because the treatments send Greta back in time, to her previous lives - to 1918, and to 1941. In both lives she finds all of the same people from 1985 - her beloved twin Felix (now carefully hiding his true self); her lover Nathan (who is her husband in these previous lives); and her beloved Aunt Ruth (in whom Greta confides her time-travel). Greta is having the shock treatments in each of these lives, and after each treatment she moves on to the next life, in a normal sort of pattern. But then she figures out that while 1985 Greta is traveling, 1918 and 1941 Greta are traveling too, and all of them are interfering in each other's present day life.

I think it's interesting that the author, Andrew Sean Greer, picked the years he did: 1985, at the height of the AIDS "plague"; 1918, when WWI is just ending, and there is a massive flu epidemic; and 1941, when WWII is just starting for America. These were all kind of turning-points in American culture, and predate the shrinking cultural effects of the Internet and cell phones and Twitter. I also have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at how well a male author inhabited a female character. I will definitely look for other books by Greer.

The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells