The Summer of Impossible Things by Rowan Coleman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I stayed up all night reading this 424-page novel because I was so drawn into the story that I could not put it down. The basic premise is that a young woman named Luna, who lives in England and works as a physicist, loses her mother to suicide. Before she and her sister Pia travel to Brooklyn, New York, to settle the estate, Luna views footage from a film their mother made as a goodbye. In this footage, the mother alludes to a terrible event from the past, and reveals that the man Luna always knew as her dad is not her biological father. The footage ends with the cryptic words: "If you look very hard you will find me in Brooklyn.....if you want to look after you know what I did....He wouldn't let me go, you see. Find me...please."

Luna senses a deep dread and a primal knowledge upon hearing this message. Her fear stems from the fact that she has been experiencing intermittent flashes and odd, disorienting episodes that suggest that she may have the ability to travel back in time. In fact, as soon as Luna and Pia are in Brooklyn, Luna has the same strange, familiar flashes, which intensify as she approaches the building where their mother once lived. She hears the song "Hotel California" coming from her mother's building. There she encounters unusual furnishings and a group of young people in late 70s attire, and she realizes that she has landed in 1977. She is stunned to discover that the woman she sees sitting on the back of a brown sofa is her mother. When their eyes meet. Luna sees that her mother, Marissa ("Riss"), is free-spirited and lighthearted, unlike anything Luna remembers from her late mother's affect. This makes it immediately clear to Luna that Riss has not yet experienced the trauma that altered her personality and eventually drove her to kill herself. It is obvious to the reader that whatever happened to Riss resulted in Luna's conception. (A major hint is disclosed early on: Luna is the only member of her family with blue eyes).

When Luna and Pia meet the lawyer who is handling the estate and the sale of their mother's building, they are given a box labeled "To My Daughters" in their mother's handwriting. It contains four reels of Super-Eight film, a projector and a battery pack. When the sisters watch the first film, they see their mother and hear her tell them the story of what happened to her in 1977 that destroyed her life. Now knowing the truth, a horrified Luna resolves to rewrite time in order to save Riss from the experience that drove her to take her own life in middle age, even though this will eradicate Luna's very existence.

Luna discovers the identity of her birth father. She travels back to 1977 several times; inevitably she and Riss are drawn together and bond. This strengthens Luna's determination to find her birth father and prevent Riss from ever meeting him. The blue-eyed man revealed as her father comes as a shock to the reader - at least to me. At this point, I was unable to stop reading.

Each time Luna goes back in time, something is altered about the past. (This is reminiscent of Stephen King's 11/22/63). I won't reveal any more of the details; suffice to say that Luna falls in love with one of her mother's male friends from the past, and she encounters older versions of these individuals when she is in the present time. Just when everything seems to fall into place, a shocking twist occurs, and the book's resolution left me reeling.

I will admit that even though I caught some hints early on, I was so drawn into the story that I suspended my imagination and went for the ride. I'm glad I did, and even happier that I didn't glance ahead (as I often do) to see how things would end.

The odd thing about this book is that it came out this past summer, and I was unable to buy it on Amazon; I had to get it from England. I am still pondering this. I am also eager for the movie that I hope will follow. This is by far the best book I have read in 2017; I will add that I've already read Rowan Coleman's earlier books and was already enchanted by her writing. This book will resonate with anyone who loved The Time Traveler's Wife and 11/22/63. I am looking for more of Rowan Coleman's work; needless to say, I highly recommend this novel!



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My response to Quora question: "How would you compare SMART Recovery to AA?"

    

I’m intrigued by SMART Recovery, and might check it out if we had a group in my home town, but I doubt I’d go to a lot of meetings.

I will say this: AA does not work for me.

I have four years of sobriety, and I attended AA diligently for over three years. By last fall, I had had it up to the gills; I had been getting more and more annoyed with the behaviors I observed at the group. I was disagreeing more and more with the philosophy; the final straw was the day I found myself at a meeting at which the chairperson used the “Tag, you’re It” method rather than the customary going around the table. I was never called on. As it was, at this particular meeting, my “sponsor” (that is in quotes and I’ll explain later) was sitting right next to me. To make a long story short, it was five minutes before the end of the meeting and she had just spoken, and she knew I had not had a turn. Instead of being classy and turning to me and saying “Elizabeth?” she “tagged” a person who had already spoken! I felt like a high school kid in gym class - humiliated because I wasn’t chosen by anyone for a team. I’ve never cared whether I got a chance to share at a meeting or not; I accept that the meetings last an hour and if you are going around the table, which is the norm, it’s based on where you’re sitting. But this was, in my mind, so terribly inappropriate that I decided not to go back. I vehemently object to an AA meeting turning out to be a popularity contest. I digress; back to the question: 

How would you compare SMART Recovery to AA?

Since I haven’t been to a meeting of SR, I can’t speak about what they are like, but I will make a list of the reasons why I don’t like AA:

• I don’t buy the “one day at a time.” When I say I’m going to do something, I do it. The morning after I took my last drink, I decided that I did not want to drink any more. I wanted to live. I wanted to stop hurting my loved ones. So I stopped. That is the same way I stopped smoking in 1983—I had just bought a house with a marathon runner and had no desire to pollute our home with tobacco fumes. I had no “meeting” to go to to help me through nicotine withdrawal, which I think is harder than alcohol cessation, but I have not bought a pack of cigarettes since the day I quit, and that was 34 years ago. Yes, I have bummed one from time to time, but doing that did NOT make me want to become a full-blown smoker again. I have no desire to smoke and no desire to drink - period, the end. At this point I’ve developed asthma and won’t go near cigarette smoke under any circumstances.
• The AA group I went to was full of very conservative, cliquish, right-wing Big Book bangers. The woman I chose for a “sponsor” did nothing but spew slogans at me, peppered with laughter and constant interruptions from her theatrical young daughter. I don’t need nor want a lay person to go to when I am burdened. I prefer professional help. In addition, there is a lot of gossip and scapegoating going on in that group, and there isn’t a single person there who would appeal to me as a confidante and/or support person. I was actually told more than once that I was not well-liked.
• I've gotten the cold shoulder from them because I ask questions. When I do that, I am scolded and told that I sound like a “little professor,” that I am “too smart,” that I “think too much,” and that I should read “the book.” I am United Methodist, and in my denomination, we are never instructed to read the Bible and take every word literally. My pastors invite discussion and debate, and there is an academic atmosphere that I very much like. AA seems almost like one of those fundamentalist churches I’ve heard about, where you are told what you must believe, and that it is not OK to question things - much less, to think for yourself. That is called brainwashing.
• I stated at one meeting that while I go to church on Sunday and believe in God, I don’t think that I am sober because of God. I was called out for that, and shunned outwardly afterwards.
• I can’t stand being spoken to in bumper sticker slogans. I don’t like being glibly told “Make a gratitude list” by someone I barely know if I appear to be having a bad day.
• Many of the people there are party people, and they were used to going out to bars with their friends and getting drunk. These folks had two problems - one, they needed to stop drinking and two, they were going to need to find a new social circle. This group is their “crowd.” In my case, none of my friends drink and I was never a bar person. Quitting alcohol has not affected my social life in the least, expect for the fact that I’m no longer drunk every day, to my great relief and to that of my loved ones.
• I find AA meetings to have a robotic vibe; so many people sit there and rattle off what sound like memorized responses. There is simply no room for intellectual dialogue. It is like a religious revival meeting. Since I value religion, I attend my church. My faith and beliefs are my business, not the AA group’s. (I even had one person try to get me to attend her megachurch!)
• Stopping drinking for me was a matter of reframing my ideas around alcohol, and deciding I no longer wanted it as part of my world. It had nothing to do with a higher power. It had everything to do with not wanting to die of alcohol abuse, which is what happened to one of my sisters this past January. This just reinforces my decision not to drink.
• I have always made amends when needed. But I am not “powerless.” I am empowered. And I can't stand being in an environment in which people are constantly beating up on themselves. How is that helpful? In other words, I agree with some of the steps; I take issue with others. I will be damned if I’m going to sit and listen to “Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon.” I didn’t do that. I just told my family, my boyfriend and my best friend that I had decided to stop drinking, and I did, and that was that. And that language about how people who don’t do the steps and don’t go to meetings will surely relapse and die (“There ARE such unfortunates”) pisses me off.
• After I stopped going to meetings, I did NOT have any urge to relapse. Are you kidding me? It killed my little sister on her 60th birthday. When I think of alcohol, I want to vomit. I don’t care if other people drink; however, I do believe that I would put myself at risk if I took a drink, so I choose not to. That IS one part of the AA philosophy that I buy.
• I hate labels and I don’t call myself a smoker. I don’t like calling myself an alcoholic. I am a person who developed the unhealthy habit of using alcohol in excess to self-medicate when I was depressed, rather than getting help from a cognitive behavioral therapist and joining a church. I know I had a serious problem with alcohol, but the fact that I was able to stop without effort suggests that maybe I am not an “alcoholic.” I don’t think my sister nor most of the people who go those AA meetings could have cut it out completely. I will repeat that I believe that it would be unwise for me to drink again, and I will not.
• I have ADHD and I have trouble concentrating at meetings or at any gathering where I have to listen to other people for a long time. I carry a notebook with me and I take notes if I feel like I am tuning out. Being able to write is a safety valve for me; I often take notes during the sermons at church and my pastors know it, and they don’t mind. At AA I actually had a person grab my notebook away from me. That was a violation of my personal boundaries.
• Finally, I know I am on the Aspie spectrum. I will reiterate that I hate groups. I will also say this, wholeheartedly: I love life, and I want to live. And I don’t believe that I must depend on a group and meetings and steps in order to live. I will not live my life driven by fear of relapse. I am 67 and I plan to be around for a long time. I know AA has helped thousands, and I respect that. But - groupthink is just not for me.