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Average rating3.2
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 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?
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I had very high hopes for this book. And whenever that happens you know what you're going to get....disappointment.
Greta Wells is clearly unflappable. If I woke up in 1918 or 1941 in a body similar, but different from my own I think I would have reacted with a little more shock than she did. Well, maybe a lot. There's never any explanation as to how or why this is happening to her and she seems to want to do is to meddle in the lives of people she has no right to.
Greta's voice grated on my nerves. I just plain didn't like her. I would have liked to take some moments with the other Greta's, to get inside their heads and see what the 1918 Greta thought about 1985, but we were stuck with 1985 Greta.
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