"The premise of this novel isn’t that a woman
travels through time: it’s that ‘the impossible happens once to each of
us’…What this wonderful novel teaches us is how magic works.” -- John Irving
From the critically acclaimed author of the New York
Times bestseller The Confessions of Max Tivoli comes The
Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, a rapturously romantic story of a woman
who finds herself transported to the “other lives” she might have lived.
After the death of her beloved twin brother and the
abandonment of her long-time lover, Greta Wells undergoes electroshock therapy.
Over the course of the treatment, Greta finds herself repeatedly sent to 1918,
1941, and back to the present. Whisked from the gas-lit streets and horse-drawn
carriages of the West Village to a martini-fueled lunch at the Oak Room, in
these other worlds, Greta finds her brother alive and well—though fearfully
masking his true personality. And her former lover is now her devoted
husband…but will he be unfaithful to her in this life as well? Greta Wells is
fascinated by her alter egos: in 1941, she is a devoted mother; in 1918, she is
a bohemian adulteress.
In this spellbinding novel (now in paperback) by Andrew Sean Greer, each
reality has its own losses, its own rewards; each extracts a different price.
Which life will she choose as she wrestles with the unpredictability of love
and the consequences of even her most carefully considered choices?
Andrew Sean Greer is the bestselling author of The Story
of a Marriage and The Confessions of Max Tivoli, which was a Today
book club selection and received a California Book Award.
From the critically acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller The Confessions of Max Tivoli comes The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, a rapturously romantic story of a woman who finds herself transported to the “other lives” she might have lived.
