NWPR Books

One night in 1910, a little girl is born during a snowstorm in the English countryside. The umbilical cord is wrapped around the baby's neck; she turns blue and gasps for life. The doctor can't make it through the snow, and the little girl dies.

That same little girl is born on another version of that night in 1910, but this time the doctor makes it through the storm, delivers the baby and stays for breakfast.

On a snowy night in 1910, a baby girl is born — and dies before she can take her first breath. She is born — and grows up to become an assassin who eliminates Hitler before he can take power. She is born — and lives a handful of different lives in a Britain descending into war; the book jumps from one narrative to another with a dreamy sort of logic. "Time isn't circular," she tells a therapist at one point. "It's like a ... palimpsest. ...

Jonathan Dee likes to write about rich, good-looking people falling apart — and who among the 99 percent of us can't enjoy that plot? In The Privileges, the dad of the family was a Wall Street trader, tempted by existential boredom into larceny; in A Thousand Pardons, the dad of the family is a partner in a New York law firm, tempted by existential boredom into a disastrous workplace affair.