The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer

Published by Ecco on June 25, 2013

Is it ever possible to be the person who, as a child, you dreamed of becoming? That's the question that animates The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells.

Greta experiences "true sadness" when, within a period of months in 1985, her twin brother Felix dies and Nathan, her live-in lover, leaves her for another woman. After conventional treatment for depression fails, she turns to electroconvulsive therapy. Greta assumes she's hallucinating when, the following day, she wakes up in a bedroom that isn't quite hers with a face she doesn't recognize. She eventually realizes she's living in 1918, having exchanged bodies with a Greta from a pre-AIDS Manhattan where Felix "lived, but did not live well," and where she married Nathan, who has gone to war. Another treatment, this one administered in 1918, sends Greta to 1941, to an even stranger life where Nathan is living at home with her, but as a less-than-faithful husband.

If Greta isn't hallucinating, perhaps she is traveling through time to parallel universes, or (as the 1985 version of her Aunt Ruth suggests) perhaps she is experiencing the transmigration of souls. Perhaps this is happening because all three versions of Greta want to escape their lives, to make them perfect. As she cycles through the three time frames, the 1985 Greta, eager to change her own and her brother's life in the earlier times, finds that the other Gretas have been mucking about in her 1985 life. In each life Greta must make choices, but the right decision in one life might be the wrong decision in another. In each life, Greta's heart wants what it wants, but as she bounces from life to life, what her heart wants is not always clear. "If only we just loved who we're supposed to love" is a thought that runs through the novel, but how do we know who we're supposed to love? Andrew Sean Greer's point (which he eventually states explicitly) is that we each have many heads and many hearts. Another (albeit less obvious) point is that it's fine to change your own life but it's generally best not to meddle in another's.

Change is a theme that dominates The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells. Each Greta is fundamentally the same but subtly different, as are the Nathans and Felixes, the changes dictated by the times in which they live ("It takes so little to make us different people"). Changing times are most notably reflected through Greta's brother, who refuses to acknowledge his true nature in 1918, stays in the closet in 1941, and is openly gay in 1985. On a more intimate level, the novel addresses the need to find that part of ourselves that all our friends know we should change but lack the courage to tell us. Yet the story is also about the illusion of change. In 1918, at the end of the war and in the midst of a flu pandemic, Greta is the only person who knows that a new world war will begin in twenty years, that an HIV pandemic will spread death in sixty years. In each life, people die, lovers disappoint. Perhaps the perfection Greta seeks is unattainable; perhaps some things can't be changed. Perhaps fate dictates our lives, no matter what choices we make. Perhaps it is only our memories that change, the present altering the past.

Although Greer addresses a number of interesting ideas, it's probably impossible to pull off a story like this in a way that is entirely satisfying. At times, Greer strives without success to make simplicity out of complexity. Melodramatic moments undermine the parts of the story that seem genuine. Greer too often serves up platitudes, although I appreciate his occasional acknowledgement of different perspectives (Greta's "live for today," for instance, is countered with her brother's "It only works if there's no tomorrow"). Dialog occasionally hits a false note as characters utter philosophical pronouncements that are a bit too obvious. The plot falters toward the novel's end. It resolves a little too easily, sidestepping hard questions in favor of easy answers. Although the novel is flawed -- a strong concept imperfectly executed -- it offers enough moments of insight to make it worth reading.

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