By Bonnie ZoBell
Imagine being able to slip through a passageway in own your laundry room and arrive in a whole different life when yours isn’t going so well. Personally, I wish I’d heard of this a long time ago and will be contacting Ellen Meister immediately for tips since this is exactly what happens in her stunning novel, THE OTHER LIFE. This stellar book is full of just this kind of imagination. It’s a tale that will force you to stay up way too late at night and be cranky the next day at work because you keep thinking you’ll read just another page or two, but then there goes Quinn again through that portal, and if you just read a few more pages to see what’s going to happen on the other side, you’ll be able to relax. Suddenly, several more hours have gone by.
Depressed by possible health issues of her unborn child, Quinn longs to talk to her deceased mother about the pregnancy, and she’s always wondered whether she made the right decision in leaving her ex-husband. She discovers just such a portal and crosses over to a past chapter from her life. Now she can visit with her mother whenever she likes and enjoy the brilliant colors in her mother’s paintings like she used to. Quinn learns to forgive her mother’s betrayal.
But then there’s that ex-husband of hers. She remembers there were plenty of good times with him, too. The two remember a little too well until the attraction is so strong Quinn has to extricate herself from some pretty seductive situations and decide just which life she’s going to live—the one with her new man or her old one. Besides loving her current husband, there’s her young son whom she misses desperately whenever she visits her old life.
Back and forth she goes. When tension rises in one of the worlds, she slides on back to the other, and she finds it hard to resolve all the issues at once.
A delicious read, optioned by HBO, you can purchase The Other World here.*
Ellen Meister’s highly-anticipated novel, Farewell, Dorothy Parker, will be out on with Putnam in February 2013 and promises to be every bit as brilliant and inventive, not to mention hysterical in that dry and infamous Dorothy-Parker-kind-of way. 
Violet Epps, a mousy movie critic, suddenly develops a commanding voice in the review world mainly because she learns to be a conduit for Dorothy Parker’s cantankerous spirit, who refuses to leave this earth. Using her literary idol’s scorching wit, Violet excels in her field but wishes deeply that she had the same kind of power over her personal life. She even visits the Algonquin Hotel to try to garner the kind of strength Dorothy Parker was celebrated for, only to get more entangled than she meant to with the literary lioness’s own unique, other-worldly complications.
Can’t wait to get my hands on Meister’s newest! You can keep track of it and hopefully preorder it here.
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