A sweeping novel of love, loss and the impossible business of living out of time
Some love stories defy time. Others must learn to live with it.
When Audrey Niffenegger published The Time Traveler’s Wife, she created an unforgettable love story in which time was both the greatest obstacle to intimacy and the force that bound two lives together. A multi-million-copy bestseller that captivated readers worldwide, the novel established Niffenegger as a distinctive voice in contemporary fiction, celebrated for weaving speculative ideas into deeply human explorations of love, grief and fate. Now, after years of anticipation, Niffenegger returns to this extraordinary literary universe with Life Out of Order, a new novel that carries its legacy forward while exploring the emotional costs of a life that refuses to follow a predictable course.
At the heart of Life Out of Order is Alba DeTamble, the daughter of Henry DeTamble, who inherits her father’s rare condition: involuntary time travel. As Alba slips unpredictably between decades, she struggles to build a life in the present, finding solace in music and in a close-knit community of artists and activists. But love, family secrets and the arrival of another time traveller threaten to unsettle the fragile order she has created. Moving from riot-torn Chicago to an eerie, timeless house and a digital museum of lost memories, Niffenegger crafts an intimate yet expansive story about the people we cannot bear to lose, the futures we cannot change and the elusive possibility of belonging to the present.
With its intricate treatment of time, memory and human connection, Life Out of Order revisits the imaginative brilliance of The Time Traveler’s Wife while standing as a compelling story in its own right. It asks a question at the heart of every life, whether lived in order or otherwise: if we could glimpse the future, would it change how we love in the present?
