Landline - by Rainbow Rowell (Paperback)

About the Book

"TV writer Georgie McCool is trying to have it all, but it becomes clear that she's failing when her husband Neal heads to Nebraska for a family Christmas with their kids--without her. The career opportunity of a lifetime has appeared, but now her marriage may be ending as a result. What seems to be the setup for just another contemporary novel about midlife struggles takes a near-paranormal turn when Georgie finds a way to talk to Neal, but he's not the Neal who's just left her. Instead, she's talking to him in the past, right before they got engaged"--

Book Synopsis

#1 New York Times bestselling author! A New York Times Best Seller! Goodreads Choice Award Winner for Best Fiction of 2014! An Indie Next Pick!

IF YOU GOT A SECOND CHANCE AT LOVE,
WOULD YOU MAKE THE SAME CALL?

As far as time machines go, a magic telephone is pretty useless.

TV writer Georgie McCool can't actually visit the past -- all she can do is call it, and hope it picks up.

And hope he picks up.

Because once Georgie realizes she has a magic phone that calls into the past, all she wants to do is make things right with her husband, Neal.

Maybe she can fix the things in their past that seem unfixable in the present. Maybe this stupid phone is giving her a chance to start over ...

Does Georgie want to start over?

From Rainbow Rowell, the New York Times bestselling author of Eleanor & Park and Fangirl, comes this heart-wrenching - and hilarious - take on fate, time, television and true love.

Landline asks if two people are ever truly on the same path, or whether love just means finding someone who will keep meeting you halfway, no matter where you end up.

Review Quotes

"The magic phone becomes Ms. Rowell's way to rewrite 'It's a Wonderful Life'...what that film accomplished with an angel named Clarence, Ms. Rowell accomplishes with a quaint old means of communication, and for her narrative purposes, it really does the trick." --The New York Times

"While the topic might have changed, this is still Rowell--reading her work feels like listening to your hilariously insightful best friend tell her best stories." --Library Journal, starred review on Landline

"Her characters are instantly lovable, and the story moves quickly...the ending manages to surprise and satisfy all at once. Fans will love Rowell's return to a story close to their hearts." --Kirkus Reviews on Landline

"Rowell is, as always, a fluent and enjoyable writer--the pages whip by." --Publishers Weekly on Landline

"Keen psychological insight, irrepressible humor and a supernatural twist: a woman can call her husband in the past." --Time Magazine on Landline

"The dialogue flows naturally; it's zippy, funny, and fresh. The flirtation between young Georgie and Neal is genuinely romantic." --Boston Globe

"After the blazing successes of Eleanor & Park, Fangirl and Attachments, it's become clear that Rowell is an absolute master of rendering emotionally authentic and absorbing stories...While the novel soars in its more poignant moments, Rowell injects the proper dose of humor to keep you laughing through your tears." --RT Book Reviews on Landline

"To skip her work because of its rom-com sheen would be to miss out on the kind of swift, canny honesty of that passage, which is typical of the pleasures of Landline -- it's a book that's a joy from sentence to sentence, and on that intimate level there's absolutely nothing unoriginal or clichéd in the way Rowell thinks. Her work is dense with moments of sharp observation...and humor." --Chicago Tribune Printers Row

"But a focus on the endings is the wrong one when you're reading a book of Rowell's. What matters most are the middles, which she packs with thoughtful dissections of how we live today, reflections upon the many ways in which we can love and connect as humans, and tacit reassurances of the validity of our feelings regardless of our particular experiences." --Slate.com on Landline

"Landline might not have any teenage protagonists, but it does have all the pleasures of Rowell's YA work -- immediate writing that's warm and energetic" --Time.com

"More gentle, more real than Douglas Coupland, more smooth and also more clever than Helen Fielding. Truly, slowly, sweetly gorgeous." --The Globe & Mail

About the Author

Rainbow Rowell writes books. Sometimes she writes about adults (Attachments and Landline). Sometimes she writes about teenagers (Eleanor & Park, Fangirl and Carry On). But she always writes about people who talk a lot. And people who feel like they're screwing up. And people who fall in love.

When she's not writing, Rainbow is reading comic books, planning Disney World trips and arguing about things that don't really matter in the big scheme of things.

She lives in Nebraska with her husband and two sons.