The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, July 2013:Like many books about time travel, including Stephen King’s11/23/64and the author’s ownThe 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