“How long ‘til my soul gets it right?”
—Indigo Girls, “Galileo”
NYC, 1982. It’s New Year’s Eve. At midnight, Oona will turn 19. She’s exactly where she wants to be—at a party with her beloved boyfriend and friends, and their band is about to perform. She has a tough decision to make: should she go study economics in London or should she stay and perform with the band? But regardless of what she chooses to do, she knows it’s going to be a great year.
Then the clock strikes midnight...and when she wakes up she’s 51 years old. She’s told by a friendly stranger that she has a condition where on the cusp of the new year every year, she leaps either forward or backward in time.
This discovery is bewildering for Oona. She tries to understand all that has changed in her world and the world around her, and as she connects with the constants in her life she tries to figure out how to spend the time until she can hopefully make it back to that night in 1982.
Oona Out of Order follows Oona as she travels back and forth through her life. Guided by advice from her previous self, advice she sometimes takes and sometimes ignores, she makes some big mistakes and some shocking discoveries. Ultimately she realizes the things she can and cannot change, and is buoyed by a series of loves.
This is a poignant, moving, tremendously thought-provoking book that is so beautifully written. I love books about time travel, especially those which deal with the emotional aspects rather than the scientific. There were so many wondrous moments to be found here.
I really enjoyed this and loved the characters, including the supporting characters, so much. I felt like it dragged a bit in the middle (maybe one too many leaps through time, even though each one added more depth to her story), but I couldn’t stop reading because I needed to know how Margarita Montimore would tie things up.
This is one I won’t soon forget.
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