The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells
The Booksmith hosted novelist Andrew Sean Greer in celebration of his new book The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells last week, and he told Evan Karp that he had a recent phone call from no one else than the Queen of Pop herself and that might result in a film.
“What can I say? I got a phone call last week ” Litseen.com quotes Greer as saying.
“I think it’s fine. No one’s asked me about this from a celebrity who read the book and loved it so much she called me up personally to talk to me about it. I thought it was going to be one of her assistants who was like, loved your book, she’s interested. Right. She didn’t read it. But oh no no no. She called me. She read it. She totally got it. There were a couple other people interested and they sort of all made a deal together, and she’s optioned the rights to it. We’ll see what happens. But it’s fun because it was Madonna. ”
EK: ” I’m sorry you got a phone call from Madonna? That’s incredible.”
ASG: “Yeah. Isn’t that nuts?”
David Ross: “Can you imagine his 15-year-old little self? If he could go back in time, actually, and be like It’s all going to be OK, Andy. (laughter) Little Andy. Little gay Andy.”
ASG: “Like, let me quote your novel back to you. Which has like five fantasies involved: I’m going to write a novel. Madonna will have read the novel and call me and quote it back to me and want to make a movie.”
DR: “The fact that Madonna knows his name is enough for me.”
EK: “Yeah. You should be going to every bar in the neighborhood – you probably, this is what you did all week – like, Madonna ”
In The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, we are dealing with a unique treatment of time – SFWeekly.com reports: Severely depressed after losing her brother to AIDS and separating from her longtime lover, Greta undergoes shock treatment and is transported to bygone eras and the lives she would have lived there. Only, everyone in her life comes with her. “I wanted to make time travel without paradoxes of any kind; I didn’t want it to be about visiting another time, I wanted it to be about living in another time,” Greer says. “An entire life in another time period; that’s what interested me.”
Set in 1985, 1918, and 1941, the book presents us with the impact a different set of circumstances might have on the development of a person. In 1918, for instance, Greta’s gay brother is not only alive but married.
