Rainbow Rowell may best be known for her young adult novels "Eleanor and Park" and "Fangirl," but her latest is the adult novel "Landline." The story takes place over nine days, from December 17 through Christmas morning, and features one of my favorite contexts: time travel (ish).
Georgie is a comedy writer for TV. Her husband Neal, once a comic illustrator/writer and aspiring oceanographer, is a stay-at-home dad originally from Nebraska. It's a week before Christmas 2013, and the couple is getting ready to head to Omaha with their two young daughters to celebrate the holiday with Neal's family.
Until ... Georgie is offered the opportunity of a lifetime: a show of her own. The catch is that she and her writing partner, Seth, must churn out four scripts in 10 days, meaning she will have to work through Christmas and miss the trip to Omaha. Neal takes off with the girls, leaving Georgie behind. But has he left her behind for good? Retreating to her mother's home as she wrestles with this question, Georgie discovers that when she phones Neal's parents from an old rotary phone, she reaches Neal in the past, 1998 to be exact, the year the young couple wrestled with whether to continue their relationship or split up for good.
Even more than that, though, the novel is about reckoning with the choices you've made, the life you've created, the need for risk and the impossibility for perfection. Rowell has a uniquely tender narrative voice, one lacking hard edges and dark alleys. Yet with all its sweetness and compassion (and gentle humor), the novel asks difficult questions and resists easy resolutions while still leaving the reader with a reminder of what matters most.