ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – Life Out of Order by Audrey Niffenegger

Life Out of Order by Audrey Niffenegger is the sequel to The Time Traveler’s Wife. It’s published by Jonathan Cape and is available now. My thanks to the publishers for the proof copy and for the pretty special edition hardback of TTTW.

Alba DeTamble is a time traveler, slipping unpredictably through decades like her father before her. But the hardest thing she carries isn’t the burden of futures she can’t understand, or pasts she cannot change – it’s a secret: she is in love with two different people.

Each of them offers a different life. Zach lives in the present and can’t follow her when she disappears. Oliver can travel through time, just like she can.

As Alba careens from time to time, moving from the riot-torn Chicago streets of her present to the eerie, timeless Yellow House, and into the digital corridors of the Museum of Lost Souls and a flooded future London, she must face a question she can no longer avoid: how is it possible to love, and live a meaningful life, in an increasingly troubled, fractured world?

Intimate and expansive, Life Out of Order is a kaleidoscopic story of love, resilience and hope when time is running out.

Life Out of Order is the sequel to The Time Traveler’s Wife that I didn’t know I needed but which I cannot now imagine being without. It tells the story of Alba, the daughter of Henry and Clare, also a time traveller, having inherited Henry’s Chrono-Displacement Disorder. Alba loves two men: Zach who offers a more conventional set up and Oliver, a fellow time traveller who understands Alba’s way of life. The Time Traveler’s Wife is a love story between Henry and Clare and Life Out of Order is also a love story, just more complicated, whilst also tackling the big issues of our current world like climate change and the rise of AI.

There’s a lot going on in this book and it’s quite a weighty tome. When I started reading, it wasn’t quite what I had expected (and perhaps hoped). Teenage parties, a futuristic vibe, riots and protests on the streets made me unsure, but then I read on and I became thoroughly absorbed by Alba’s story, her travels, her loves, her family and friends. It took me quite a long time to read this book but I just didn’t want it to end.

As well as Alba, we also get to see what the years after Henry were like for Clare, a thread that I found fulfilling and which led to some extremely intriguing technological aspects to the story. It’s so thought-provoking and I felt lump in the throat moments when I read the view of the future portrayed in this book which felt like a barren wasteland yet utterly possible and completely unnerving. I was pleased to see Henry pop up a few times too which I suppose was inevitable given his time-travelling tendencies. Those sections felt particularly emotional and bittersweet to me.

This is a hard book to review. I can’t pigeonhole it, it’s timeless and yet overflowing with time, beautiful and heart-rending. It’s everything all at once. I was enraptured by the time-travelling which is one of my favourite genres, and in this book it thrusts us around the past, present and future in much the same way as Alba. Brilliantly plotted and full of humanity, I absolutely loved Life Out of Order which is epic in every way.

Audrey Niffenegger is a visual artist and writer who lives mostly in Chicago and occasionally in London. She has published six books, including the novels The Time Traveler’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry. She helped to found the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts. Her art has been exhibited by Printworks Gallery in Chicago since 1986. She is a Professor in the Fiction Department of Columbia College. Her recent projects include a ballet, Raven Girl, in collaboration with Wayne McGregor for the Royal Opera House Ballet.