Title: Life Out of Order
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Publication date: October 6, 2026
Length: 560 pages
Genre: Science fiction / time travel
Source: Purchased
Rating:
The multi-million copy bestselling author of The Time Traveler’s Wife returns with an exhilarating speculative story set in a dystopian future where virtual reality and real life converge.
Alba DeTamble has never lived a life in order. Born with the same rare Chrono-Displacement Disorder as her father Henry, she slips unpredictably through decades, haunted by the secrets of a future she can witness but cannot change. As Alba strives to maintain a normal life with Zach, her safe, supportive anchor, she forms a tight-knit community of artists and activists who fight to take care of each other in an increasingly unstable world.
At once intimate and expansive, Life Out of Order plunges readers into a world of Niffenegger’s dazzling imagination: from the riot-torn streets of a dystopian Chicago, to a digital museum for forgotten memories and lost artifacts. Curating this ever-expanding museum is Isadora, Alba’s mysterious stepsister and an unsettling presence in their family – whose fate may be intertwined with Alba’s in more dangerous ways than she knows.
Told through a kaleidoscope of perspectives, the story moves through a boundless, unfolding universe of virtual reality, skimming the wildest reaches of technology and our natural world. The result is a testament to the power of art and community to sustain us in these fractured times—and an epic tale that’s set to define an entirely new genre in a way only Niffenegger can.
The Time Traveler’s Wife is firmly ensconced on my “favorites” shelf — so much so that I’ve been hesitant to reread it, fearing that revisiting it after so many years would change my feelings about the story. Still, it made a huge impression when I first read it. In fact, in remains the one and only book that I read two times in a row! I loved the concepts, the execution, the writing, and the gorgeous emotions at the heart of the story. (The less said about the TV and movie adaptations, the better…)
My expectations were incredibly high when I learned that finally, after more than 20 years, a sequel would be released! I knew going in that Life Out of Order would focus on Alba, daughter of the original book’s main characters, also a time traveler like her father. Sadly, my overall impression of Life Out of Order is that it’s a big, muddled book that simply does not have the same focus or emotional impact as The Time Traveler’s Wife.
If I had been a normal girl, I might have done all the normal things in the normal order: school, job, marriage, kids. I might have had one husband, or none, or one and then another, instead of two at once. Maybe I would have been less chaotic, less troublesome, but maybe also less loved; who knows? I look ahead and marvel at the near misses, the good intentions and lucky guesses. I look back and regret all the lies. I try not to hurt people. But mostly, I just try not to panic.
Life Out of Order begins in 2022. Alba is 21 years old, in the standard course of her life. As each chapter lets us know, her time traveling means that she can be present in various times and places at other ages as well, and the rules of time travel in Audrey Niffenegger’s fiction allow someone to not only cross their own timeline, but hang out with other versions of themselves. So, in 2022, Alba is 21… but her 29- and 47-year-old selves also show up.
To give you a sense of how that plays out, this is a typical scenario:
After a day of adrenaline and anxiety, it’s a pleasure to be quiet and watch one Alba soothing the other. When the milkshake has been consumed, future Alba places the empty cup in the trash and present Alba rearranges herself cautiously on the bed.
As the story opens, there seems to be civil unrest in Chicago (and presumably elsewhere) — a citywide curfew is in effect, helicopters fly overhead incessantly, and surveillance seems to be pervasive. Alba and her closest friends seem to be involved in underground protest and action groups. I say “seem to be” because explanations are hard to come by — she’s immediately involved in an undercover action to deal with a group of fascist goons, but details are a bit murky.
And onward the story goes, looping forward and backward through time, as we follow Alba across the years, back to her childhood but also far into her own future — and the future is not pretty. Social collapse, flooding from the climate change that everyone saw coming but no one did anything to stop, famine and disease, the destructive forces of uncontrolled technology… it’s pretty much everything you’d expect from futuristic fiction. As we saw with Alba’s father Henry in The Time Traveler’s Wife, knowledge of the future doesn’t come with the ability to change anything. In these books’ concept of time, past, present, and future all exist at once; things happen because they’ve always happened. Alba may know what’s coming for all the people she loves, but she chooses to share that information or not in part to allow people to continue believing they have agency and free will, even while all outcomes have already been determined.
Characters and complications abound. We spend time with Clare, Alba’s mother, seeing her life after Henry (although Henry, being a time traveler, makes appearances throughout Life Out of Order despite having died already in the chronology of the non-time traveling characters), as well as with new people who comes into Alba and Clare’s lives. A major plotline involves an AI creation who’s considered Alba’s sister, and then there’s the husband factor, which I won’t even attempt to untangle here.
As I said from the start, this book is quite a muddle, and it’s very long. To be honest, I was itching to consider this book a DNF — and the only thing that kept me going was the fact that I’d already purchased a hardcover edition. Forcing myself to keep going, I finally felt a bit more invested by about the 20% point, and from then onward I was determined to make it through to the end.
Part 2 of the book, going back to Alba’s childhood and including much more Clare and Henry, was more engaging and enjoyable than the first part. (Basically, scenes with Henry were the highlight of the book.) Still, my overall impression didn’t really change. The author is trying to do a lot in this book, and I don’t think it particularly works.
The Time Traveler’s Wife is a love story. Life Out of Order is not, although love stories are parts of the whole. The jumbled storytelling approach, so effective in the first book as a way of showing love across time, here just ends up feeling like lots of random jumping around. And while age discrepancies in certain love scenes — caused by effects of time travel — are presented as unusual but ultimately romantic, I couldn’t get past the ick factor.
By the time I made it past the halfway point, I did feel more involved and wanted to see how all the various storylines would work out. But did I love it? Sadly, no. I’d rather hold onto my positive memories of The Time Traveler’s Wife than have to consider the events of Life Out of Order as part of the characters’ stories. I’d give this book 3.25 stars for creativity and some interesting character moments… but I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend it, and I have a feeling others who loved The Time Traveler’s Wife will likely feel the same way.
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