Machel Shull's Blog - Posts Tagged "andrew-sean-greer"

The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book starts off with Greta Wells losing her beloved twin brother during 1985, dying from AIDS. We soon find out that Greta's marriage is falling apart, too, because Greta has been off tending for her brother illness and her husband and her grew apart.
Greta lapses into a deep depression that eventually leads her to shock treatment to help regain normalcy and overcome grief in her 1985.
This book deals with these themes:
Who is to say anyone ever overcomes grief? Who is to say there are magical words to heal the torn soul from feeling lost and alone? Who is to say that we can rebuild our life? What is the point when life can hurt so deeply?
Well, inside the pages of Greta Wells, Greta is given a chance to live again in two past lives of herself, finding her brother very much alive in 1918 and 1942. The Greta from 1985 travels through time during her electric shock therapy; like skipping stones, each Greta shifts, living a week or in the new era.
1918, 1941, 1985
There are three wars in each World War 1, World War 11, the epidemic war of AIDS.
This book sounds clever, like time travel, different worlds, historical fiction...IT'S NOT.
This book examines the human heart and all of the pains and wrongs that we must endure.
Greta is able to learn by living these other altered worlds of her life, that life is still worth living.
That sometimes, mini miracles occur when we think we are at the bottom, looking up...something shifts and life turns over new again.
The writing here is such that I cannot describe it with one word like 'lyrical.'
Imagine feeling chills in your legs as you read a paragraph aloud to your husband because the writing is not only telling the fiction story but can be lifted into the air as breathlessly as a song and heard by another that can understand the beauty of these words without reading the book.

***
When others tell me they don't read because they aren't into fiction or it's to takes to much sedentary time, I don't know how to put into words all they are missing; that their soul may never sour to the heights of beauty I just experienced by reading Andrew Sean Greer's book.

So many quotes to share inside that book, that I must go back and find each of them and highlight them to share.
His book LESS may be a favorite of mine, a little more than this one, but Greta's soul found a will to live even if it meant breaking the barriers of time to do it.
A thread of hope always exists...if we can bare this life enough to find it.
Keep reading.
Yes, I recommend



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