Andrew Sean Greer – författare

A psychiatric treatment transports a woman to other lives she might have lived in this romantic story by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Less.

“The premise of this novel isn’t that a woman travels through time; it’s that the impossible happens once to each of us. . . . What this wonderful novel teaches us is how magic works.” —John Irving

One of the New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of 2013

After the death of her beloved twin brother, Felix, and the breakup with her longtime lover, Nathan, Greta Wells embarks on a radical psychiatric treatment to alleviate her suffocating depression. But the treatment has unexpected effects, and the Great of 1985 finds herself transported to remarkably similar lives in different eras—as a bohemian and adulteress in 1918, and a devoted wife and mother in 1941—fraught with familiar tensions and difficult choices.

Traveling through time, the modern Greta learns that each reality has its own losses and rewards, and that her alternate selves are unpredictable, driven by their own desires and needs. And as the final treatment looms, one of these other selves could change everything.

Magically atmospheric, achingly romantic, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells beautifully imagines “what if” and wondrously wrestles with the impossibility of what could be.

“A love letter to Greenwich Village, in three indelible eras, and to the intricacies of love itself. Absolutely gorgeous!” —Paula McLain

“Elegiac in tone, this tale of time travel, loss, and compromise is as precisely engineered as a Swiss watch. [Greer] manages the complexities of this temporal round robin with precision and panache.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Andrew Sean Greer is one of the most talented writers around, feeling and funny, with a genuinely fine prose style and a sensibility to match.” —Michael Chabon

1985. After the death of her beloved twin brother, Felix, and the breakup with her longtime lover, Nathan, Greta Wells embarks on a radical psychiatric treatment to alleviate her suffocating depression. But the treatment has unexpected effects, and Greta finds herself transported to the lives she might have had if she''d been born in different eras.

During the course of her treatment, Greta cycles between her own time and alternate lives in 1918, where she is a bohemian adulteress, and 1941, which transforms her into a devoted mother and wife. Separated by time and social mores, Greta''s three lives are remarkably similar, fraught with familiar tensions and difficult choices. Each reality has its own losses, its own rewards, and each extracts a different price. And the modern Greta learns that her alternate selves are unpredictable, driven by their own desires and needs.

As her final treatment looms, questions arise: What will happen once each Greta learns how to remain in one of the other worlds? Who will choose to stay in which life?

Magically atmospheric, achingly romantic, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells beautifully imagines ""what if"" and wondrously wrestles with the impossibility of what could be.

A collection of the year’s best short stories, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Sean Greer and series editor Heidi Pitlor.

Andrew Sean Greer, “an exceptionally lovely writer, capable of mingling humor with sharp poignancy” (Washington Post), selects twenty stories out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year. 

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018

A heartbreaking and daring love story that questions the nature of time, appearance, and reality, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less.We are each the love of someone''s life.So begins The Confessions of Max Tivoli, Andrew Sean Greer''s extraordinarily haunting novel. At his birth, Max''s father declares him a "nisse," a creature of Danish myth, as his baby son has the external physical appearance of an old, dying creature. Max grows older like any child, but his physical age appears to go backward—on the outside a very old man, but inside still a fearful child.The story is told in three acts. First, young Max falls in love with a neighborhood girl, Alice, who ages as normally as any of us. Max, of course, does not; as a young man, he has an older man''s body. But his curse is also his blessing: as he gets older, his body grows younger, so each successive time he finds his Alice, she does not recognize him. She takes him for a stranger, and Max is given another chance at love.Set against the historical backdrop of San Francisco at the turn of the twentieth century, Max''s life and confessions reveal the world through the eyes of a "monster," a being who confounds the very certainties by which we live and in doing so embodies in extremis what it means to be human.

The awkward and lovable hero of Andrew Sean Greer''s bestselling and prize-winning novel Less returns in this unforgettable road trip across America.