LIFE OUT OF ORDER by Audrey Niffeneger is out October 6, 2026

 

I was so excited to get an ARC of this at ALA last month. Since the conference was held in Chicago and I ended up spending an extra few days alone in the city after, it was the perfect time to read a book set in that toddling town. I spent three very hot days reading this amazing tale of climate change, time travel, political activism and interpersonal relationships. 

Many of the familiar characters from The Time Traveler's Wife are on deck and there are some wonderful new additions. It's basically the second generation and things are not going well. There is divisiveness in the populace, global warming is out of control and time travel is more annoying than you'd think it would be. 

Niffeneger is able to avoid the patina of "grooming" that retroactively colored many readers' experience of TTW and even addresses it in the text. The daughter of Henry and Claire, Alba, is also a time traveler. She has a bit more control, or maybe awareness is a better word, of how her abilities work, but it still does a number on her. Her love interests are Zach - a sweet boy who anchors her to the present and another mysterious gentleman, the less said of, the better.

This doesn't have the sweeping romantic feel of her parent's story. And frankly, Abla is not all that interesting or loveable on her own. What is wonderful about this book is the sweeping narrative and the pockets of action that, while set in what is becoming a dystopian hellscape, echo into the world we live in today. 

I had a very hard time putting this book down. And while I don't think I'll ever get to the point of opening it and reading once scene to brighten my mood - the way I do with Claire and Henry's "first" meeting at the Newberry Library - I will definitely be visiting this world again. 

SEARCHING FOR SUNDAY by Rachel Held Evans and ENORMOUS WINGS by Laurie Frankel

 

I may have mentioned here that I was very involved in evangelical Christianity from the age of 12 until about halfway through my college career. My folks had a great awakening of spirituality when my Dad committed to AA in the 70s and gravitated to a conservative nuts and bolts, second Timothy 3:16-17 "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." kind of faith. There were many really wonderful things about this time - a sense of community is the first one, but also the feeling that there was a greater power  - thanks Bill W. - that could restore us. While it breaks my heart to read my adolescent diaries and read that it is no wonder that my life is a shit-show, because I am such a depraved sinner, I am so grateful that I retain faith in the higher power that gives my life comfort and meaning. 

So this summer, I am in the season of elderly-ness where I want to make sure I am doing right by my loved ones, and since Jesus is number one (much evidence to the contrary) I have been making a concerted effort to do more reading of a spiritual nature. However, my personal creed that I don't have to read more than 40 pages of any book that doesn't capture me precludes doing too much Bible reading and also the current political situation makes me really irked by many people who share my spiritual beliefs and background teamed up to make it something of a challenge to find something that both helps my relationship with Jesus and doesn't make me really snarky.

Enter Rachel Held Evans. Her book Searching for Sunday is the story of leaving the evangelical church while attempting to keep her faith intact. I found so many parallels in my own life. She was a popular blogger, like me. (I have a reader now! Hi, Constance!), she was deeply disturbed at how right wing politics had coopted Christianity and she loved the gays. 

To go on at length about the book would require me to remember specifics and while I loved her take on community and ...a bunch of other stuff that has now become an amorphous blob in my head... one thing that remains clear is her take on the interpretation of Scripture.

"Even the apostle Paul.. said in his letter to the Ephesians, "Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies...Ironically, this very letter is often invoked to support hierarchical genders roles in marriage, because earlier, in urging all members of a household to 'submit to one another out of reverence for Christ,' Paul describes a typical first-century Greco-Roman household, complete with a male head-of-house who has authority over his wives, slaves and children. In the past, some Christians referred to this passage to argue that the hierarchy between master and slave is God-ordained, and in the present, some continue to use it to argue that hierarchy between men and women is God-ordained. Paul is not arguing that the first-century Greco-Roman household structure is the best for humans flourishing and therefore God's design for all people everywhere. Such a question was not within his purview. Rather, he is explaining that when Christians imitate Jesus in their relationships, when partners in marriage serve one another rather than fight for dominiance, we catch a little glimpse of the mystery of Christ's relentless, self-giving love for the church."

This spoke to me SO HARD! I could go on at length about my own thoughts on Biblical interpretation and the incredible damage of assuming that Christians are a monolith, but I shan't because this is ostensibly a book review. Suffice to say, I am a huge RHE fan and have her A Year of Biblical Womanhood up next on my nightstand. 

Searching for Sunday is a memoir about leaving the toxic aspects of organized religion aside and finding a faith community that allows for many voices and interpretations and it also made me laugh out loud. 

Which brings me to Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel. The premise is that Pepper Mills (yes, her name is addressed) is a 77 year old woman who moves to an old folks home, falls in love and gets pregnant in fairly short order. It has that "finding community" vibe that I love so deeply and it is hysterically funny in places. It also brings up the specter of abortion in all its divisive glory. 

In three of the four educational institutions I attended in my adolescence, it was a given that we were all anti-abortion, I mean pro-life. We watched The Silent Scream in science class and there was an active group on my college campus that picketed Planned Parenthood as a regular activity. But I also know many people for whom abortion was a life-saving procedure. It's almost as if having different experiences gives people different attitudes about life. 

Frankel is clearly in the bodily autonomy corner, and she does a wonderful job of showing how different people's experience (or lack of) inform their attitudes about women's choice. I picked this up because I have been spending a fair amount of time in an assited living facility and the details ring true. I thought the idea of having a baby at an advanced age (one of my own personal nightmares) would be fun to read about - and it was - but I was rewarded with a lot more to think about than I expected. 

THE POOLS by E. Lockhart comes out October 2 - and you had better gird your loins...

 

...because it's weird! I read this in nearly one sitting and I will be going back to read it again. It is a novel in verse that had some weird formatting in NetGalley, but I got a paper ARC at ALA (signed by E. Lockhart, no big deal. I was first in line at her signing. I made her laugh. Whatever. It's not like I have been revisiting that glorious moment for the past 5 days...) and the formatting was lovely. But that's not the point. 

So Lexie and her family move to a new town to share . Her mother is ill and she is essentially parenting her younger sister, I think there is a dead dad, but I can't remember specifically. Luckily, she meets Chester and they fall in love. But one day Chester and the little sister and some other folks go to the local healing "pools" and as a result they turn into birds. Yep, I told you it was weird. Some stuff happens and it stays weird and some things get better and some things never do. I stan a pair of lesbian swans and I felt like I needed to read it again, but I don't know if I will. 

This felt very literary to me and Lockhart's note about the poetic formats she used was helpful in determining that I was correct. I read some reviews that mentioned parallels to depression and other issues and I can see it in retrospect, but as you know if you have read any of my other reviews, I'm about as deep as a wine pour at a chain restaurant so I rarely see those things when doing a first read. Hence the inevitable reread. 

The enjoyment factor, strong story and well defined characters are usually huge for me. I didn't necessarily enjoy this book. The story, however, was strangely captivating. And while the characters didn't spring to life, I think because of the format, there were several that I fell in love with - the aforementioned swans, the little sister and her best friend and the no-nonsense aunt. It was a strange, sad read and I couldn't put it down and, for me, that is key - the insistence on knowing what happens and why. Well, Lockhart gave me the first part and, ever since reading it, the second part has been swirling around in my head in a most gratifyingly mysterious way. 

Thanks to NetGalley for the digital ARC and E. Lockhart her damn self for the print ARC.