The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells - Hardcover

Greer, Andrew Sean

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571295398 ISBN 13: 9780571295395

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2014

Synopsis

It is 1985, and Greta Wells wishes she lived in any time but this one: she has lost her brother to AIDS, her lover Nathan to another woman, and can not seem to go on alone. To ease her sadness, her doctor suggest an unusual procedure, one that opens doors of insight into the relationships in her life, her conflicting affections, and the limitations put on a woman's life. Throughout, Greta glimpses versions of war, history, herself, and the people she loves, and as the procedures come to an end, she realizes she must make a choice: one which will close every door but one, forever.

About this title

Review:

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, July 2013: Like many books about time travel, including Stephen King’s 11/23/64 and the author’s own The Confessions of Max Tivoli, this achingly lovely novel examines the power of nostalgia and longing and hope. When we first meet Greta Wells, she lives in 1985 Greenwich Village and is mightily depressed by the death of her beloved gay twin brother from an unnamed disease that is clearly AIDS. On the advice of her psychiatrist, she begins shock treatments, which somehow let her travel to her would-have-been life in 1918, and one in 1943. Surrounded by the same people in the garb and custom of the various eras--her dead brother’s lover, a slightly nutty Aunt who made me think of Endora from TV’s Bewitched, and the lover who eventually leaves her in 1985--Greta (and we) come to see that things never really change and that, as they say, Wherever you go, there you are. Deftly and with great heart, Greer shows us that sadness is universal and timeless. But then, so is love. --Sara Nelson

The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells Playlist

9 Songs that Inspired Andrew Sean Greer

I lived through 1985, but I didn’t live through 1941 or 1918, the other eras of Greta’s life, so I tried to imagine what I would have listened to back then. A mad mix of everything, it turns out—from swing to classical to vaudeville.

1. When Tomorrow Comes by The Eurythmics

1985 was full of pop sounds, but for me I always loved a brokenhearted woman who sang like a robot. Annie Lennox helped me survive adolescence with her lovelorn lyrics and cold cold heart. And yet—so full of hope. If there were a movie of Greta Wells, it would begin with this song about “tomorrow.”

2. Close To Me by The Cure

Almost as good as a robot lady for me was a man falling apart. Being fifteen, putting this into my Walkman, and hearing The Cure breathing into my ear. Shocking. Raw and sad and full of desperate love, just like Greta. Listen to the swinging brass section—echoes of the past.

3. La Vie En Rose by Grace Jones

Grace Jones, the ultimate robot chanteuse. This patient nostalgic remake (she doesn’t sing for two and a half minutes): I picture Greta playing it as she lies in bed and thinks about her life.

4. Chattanooga Choo Choo by The Andrews Sisters

I just had to. 1941. What could better capture the spirit of America on the brink of war? They are really swinging on this one by the two minute mark.

5. Lady in the Dark: The Saga of Jenny by Gertrude Lawrence

It wasn’t all swing swing swing in 1941—there was wit and elegance to the era, including this Kurt Weil number. It pretends to be a moral tale about how a woman should not make up her mind. Of course it really does quite the opposite.

6. Everything Happens to Me by Billie Holiday

Oh Billie. A comical journey through the mishaps of a woman’s life, but Billy Holiday gives it real despair. I imagine this playing in Greta’s kitchen as she smokes a cigarette while the casserole heats in the oven.

7. Darktown Strutter's Ball by The Original Dixieland Jazz Band

1918 had a sense of freedom, and this song (disturbingly titled) shows undeniable joy. Picture young women tapping their feet, unlacing their corsets and getting up to dance! Greta’s Aunt Ruth would have played this hit during one of her notorious parties.

8. Firebird Suite: The Infernal Dance by The Budapest Festival Orchestra

Jazz, ragtime, dixieland—music that many Americans didn’t understand. But classical was quite in vogue. This piece was thoroughly modern, and its drama reminds us of the horrors of 1918: war, famine and plague.

9. You Ain't Heard Nothing Yet by Al Jolson

Subtly risqué vaudeville. Jolsen sang like nobody before—people wept and screamed—and he influenced Crosby, Sinatra, Elvis, and every kid on American Idol who croons a note. What better way to end a soundtrack than with a promise of better to come?

From the Back Cover:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0571295398
• ISBN 13: 9780571295395
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304