★★★★ (of 5)

• Full Title: Oona Out Of Order
• Author: Margarita Montimore
• Year: 2020 (mine was 2020 library hardcover)
• Pages: 336
• Genre: Fiction
• Publisher: Flatiron Books
• ISBN 9781250236609 (hardcover)
• Author’s website

 

Summary

Published in the UK as The Rearranged Life Of Oona Lockhart, this startlingly good debut novel from Margarita Montimore has been well-received but is difficult to categorize. The jacket liner blurb (read it on Goodreads) is for once very accurate. Basically, Oona “leaps” to a different year every New Year’s Eve, starting when she’s about to turn 19 (in 1982). That first leap, she woke up in her 51-year-old body in 2015, living a life she knows nothing about. A letter from her 50-year-old self (who’s already lived through many leaps) explains a little bit about what’s going on, but most of it she must figure out for herself.

With help from a man named Kenzie, and her mother, Oona navigates her reality of living each adult year in the wrong order, never knowing which year she’ll wake up in next, or whether she can do anything about it.

 

Praise

The writing is clear, the feelings and conversations realistic, and descriptions of people and places are perfectly enough to give the reader a picture of what’s going on without being tiresome.

Clearly, the author did some research before this, needing to know which stocks dipped or rose in particular years (and when they split), who won the Kentucky Derby or World Series at certain times, but also when certain phrases entered the lingo and when specific technologies became available. Some things were obvious, like 1982 Oona jumping to 2015: clearly smartphones and iTunes are going to be new to her, something out of incredibly optimistic sci-fi movies. Other times, if the leap was only a year or two away, as sometimes happened, the author needed to know exactly when certain neighborhoods were gentrified or when particular phrases (like “hella”) came into use or when certain bands became well known. A few times, I thought I’d caught her in a mistake, but each time I turned out to have an incorrect memory. (A few times, it was because the book takes place mostly in New York City and some of the years in question saw me living in places notoriously behind the times.)

The ending was satisfying, as was most of the rest of it.

 

Points Off For...

I wouldn’t have included chapters 25-27 in this book. The whole thing is awkward and wrong, and I think even 24-year-old Oona (in her 35-year-old body) would agree. I won’t spoil it, because this book is relatively new, but I wish these three chapters had been written differently.

I kept hoping for a chapter, or at least a reference to an earlier conversation, detailing how Oona explained her circumstances to the two other people who eventually know about it. Because when she first woke up in 2015, both Kenzie and her mother are aware of her “condition”, thankfully, so they can help her through it. I kept thinking we would eventually be treated to some past Oona explaining it to younger versions of those two characters. But these conversations, delightful as they might have been to read, were not included.

I also found myself assuming (and hoping) that somewhere near the end would be a quick run-through of Oona’s future leaps. But no. I understand why the author ended where she did — and I’ve said the ending was satisfying — but perhaps an epilogue or something? Or maybe Montimore plans a sequel.

 

Conclusion

The three complaints I list above are truly minor irritations, and they’re obviously subjective. They are simply the things that kept me from providing the fifth star in my ranking.

I think just about anyone who enjoys fiction would enjoy this (my wife and I both gave it four stars, and neither of us ever like the same books).

 

 

---

---

comments powered by Disqus