Oona Out Of Order
By Margarita Montimore
336 pages
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick
A Library Reads and IndieNext Pick
A Most Anticipated Book (Parade,Huffington Post,Book Riot,PopSugar)
GoodreadsStaffers’ Top Three Books of the Year
It is 1982 and as the clock strikes midnight Oona Lockhart will turn 19. Suddenly Oona faints and awakens in 2015. She still feels like her 19 year-old self but she is definitely in a strange place and in a strange 51 year-old body. She soon learns that every year on December 31st she will wake up at midnight in a different year at a different age (and you guessed it) the years are not chronological.
What did it make me think about?
What an interesting idea… What would we think if we got to travel back and forth in time? “If her future wasn’t malleable, why put limits on the present? So she said yes, yes, yes, and sometimes she wished she hadn’t, but mostly she was glad she did.”
Should I read it?
In this story Oona bounces back and forth through decades and selves in a quirky, entertaining novel. I would liken it to a lighter, shorter (maybe less literary)Life After Lifeby Kate Atkinson. In many ways this novel takes itself less seriously, which makes it is just a bit more fun…. I enjoyed this one but what kept it from being a better book wasOona herself. Couldn’t she have made some better choices?
Quote-
“While technology had been her umbilical cord to the world in 2015, this year’s Oona was happy to disconnect from screens (not that she had a choice). The novelty of convenience was replaced by the familiarity of the analog: going to stores instead of shopping online, hailing taxis instead of ordering Ubers, using landlines and pay phones instead of her cell. It was nice to see people out and about living their lives rather than curating them for the Internet or hiding behind their devices.”
