From the first sentence (“The impossible happens once to each of us”), I was completely drawn in, ready to be enchanted, and The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells delivered. I read it in one great gulp, and it’s already on my “to reread” list; because the time period changes, a slower (or second) read could help keep all the details and different storylines straight.

The book begins with Greta in late October of 1985. Due to her twin brother Felix’s death of AIDS and her longtime lover Nathan’s leaving, she is suffering from depression, and is undergoing a course of electroconvulsive therapy. And then: “That is how magic works. It takes the least likely of us, without foreshadowing, at the hour of its own choosing. It makes a thimblerig of time. And this is exactly how, one Thursday morning, I woke up in another world.” This “other world” is Greta’s own, but in 1918: she lives in the same apartment New York, her aunt Ruth nearby, her brother Felix still alive.

Eventually, it becomes apparent that there are three different Gretas, cycling through each other’s times and lives: 1918, 1941, and 1985. We follow only the original 1985 Greta, though the other Gretas leave traces of their activities behind, little things changed where they have left their own mark on each other’s lives. (“I was not borrowing these other Gretas; I was becoming them.”) In each time, the same characters appear: Felix, Ruth, and Nathan, as well as Felix’s love interest Alan and Greta’s love interest Leo.

Each of the Gretas is receiving her time period’s equivalent to electroconvulsive therapy, so that the three Gretas rotate times on a schedule (a day in 1918, a week in 1941, etc.). However, when one Greta misses a treatment, the other two switch places (instead of cycling through all three) until she returns. As the original 1985 Greta nears the end of her treatments, she must decide where she will be happiest, and where she is most needed – in the present, or in the past.

Greer’s writing is beautiful but not showy; without it, the story would be spare. When one pauses, there is so much to wonder about and untangle. Greer, however, seems less interested in the details of how a woman from 1985 would fit into a life in 1918 or 1941, and more concerned with the personal relationships in each era, and the different versions of Greta and everyone around her – of how people are shaped by their time. As Greta reflects, “A shift in weather, and we are a different person. The split of an atom, and we change….It takes so little to make us different people.”

Ultimately, Greta comes up with a question that is also her answer: “What is a perfect world except for one that needs you?”

Those who enjoy the writing style of Simon Van Booy (Love Begins in Winter, The Illusion of Separateness) and the mind-twisting intricacies of time travel literature will delight in Greta Wells.

I spent about a week reading Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz. It had been on my to-read list for some time, and I’m so glad I finally got around to it. It felt like I bookmarked something on nearly every page (and indeed, I ended up taking eight pages of notes), and my review stretched to three pages.

Full review on Goodreads

Full review including quotes (link to Google doc)

I first heard about the book in a New York Times Book Review interview with Drew Gilpin Faust (President of Harvard University), who recommended it as a book all incoming freshman should read. The book is in four parts: The Idea of Error, The Origins of Error, The Experience of Error, and Embracing Error.

Schulz is a gifted writer in the way she weaves together ideas from across several disciplines, provides illustrative examples from many sources, quotes experts from different fields, and builds a cohesive and powerful model – the “Optimistic Meta-Induction” (to counter the Pessimistic Meta-Induction*).

Although the ideas and theories in the book are substantial, the writing is accessible and personable, even funny at times. Though it’s awkward to recommend this book in person (“I just read this book called Being Wrong, I think you’d love it!”), it’s well worth reading; I found it to be an incredibly rewarding book that will, I hope, help me think and feel differently about the experiences of being right and wrong, and have more compassion and empathy for those who see things differently than I do.

*Schulz defines the Pessimistic Meta-Induction from the History of Science on page nine: “…because even the most seemingly bulletproof scientific theories of times past eventually proved wrong, we must assume that today’s theories will someday prove wrong as well.” She extrapolates from this and expands it: “No matter the domain of life, one generation’s verities so often become the next generation’s falsehoods that we might as well have a Pessimistic Meta-Induction from the History of Everything.”

Ursula Todd is born during a snowstorm in England in February 1910. The doctor is unable to make it through the snow; the umbilical cord is wrapped around Ursula’s neck; she is born blue; she dies.

Ursula Todd is born during a snowstorm in England in February 1910. The doctor arrives in time to save her from a dangerous birth, and she lives – for a while, before being smothered to death in her cradle by a cat.

Ursula Todd is born during a snowstorm in England in February 1910. After the Armistice in 1918, the Todd family’s maid, Bridget, goes to a celebration in London, and returns with the Spanish flu, to which Ursula succumbs.

Ursula Todd is born during a snowstorm in England in February 1910. She grows up, moves to London, and dies in a cellar during the Blitz.

Ursula Todd is born during a snowstorm in England in February 1910. In school, she has an aptitude for languages; after school, she travels in Europe, eventually settles in Germany, and becomes friends with Eva Braun.

These are only a few of the many lives Ursula leads. In each successive life, she is haunted by persistent deja vu. She sometimes senses when something bad is about to happen, and does what she can to avert it, but her actions are as likely to create worse consequences as they are to avert disaster. She never fully realizes or articulates to herself exactly what is happening, though she does grasp it in a vague way, and readers will pick up on the pattern (perhaps cycle is a better word) after a while.

“We only have one [life] after all, we should try and do our best. We can never get it right, but we must try.”
“What if we had a chance to do it again and again,” Teddy said, “until we finally did get it right? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

Life After Life is a bit like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story, except that the author is making the choices, and she chooses all of them. A better analogy might be the movie Sliding Doors, but with many more doors, and Ursula goes through every door instead of choosing between them. Whatever your preferred description, Life After Life is a stunning, unique, creative, compelling story. As Sarah Lyall wrote in The New York Times, “Each version is entirely and equally credible. In this way, Atkinson gets to indulge in what might be the ultimate novelist’s fantasy: producing a never-ending story in which any past, any future, even any present, is possible.”

She had been here before. She had never been here before….The past seemed to leak into the present, as if there were a fault somewhere. Or was it the future spilling into the past?….”Time isn’t circular,” she said to Dr. Kellet. “It’s like a…palimpsest….And memories are sometimes in the future.”

It is evidence of Atkinson’s skill that the reader is willing to invest and re-invest in Ursula’s character and the many different storylines. Some are easier than others to leave behind, and some linger in the mind. Each permutation also gives insight into the other characters, primarily Ursula’s family: her mother Sylvie, her father Hugh, Hugh’s sister Izzie, the Todds’ cook and maid and neighbors.

I feel as though this book is larger than I was able to wrap my mind around fully in just one reading, and I’d love to read it again and discuss it. (Book club…?)