I feel like to be human is to wonder what might have been, had we made a different choice about something. It could be as major as what we decided to study, and how that steered our lives, or as minor as which table we pick at a coffee shop, that might put us next to a person we otherwise never would have met. And since it's such a human thought process, of course fiction is all over the topic of what-might-have-beens! These five books all consider how things might have turned out differently - some quite literally, with multiple storylines that show how both ways play out, some through their characters' reflections - if different choices had been made.
The Versions of Us
In this story the "versions" of the title are literal different versions - starting in 1958 when Eva is late for her class at Cambridge and ends up with a flat tire on her bike. Jim is walking the same way and spots her, and this sets up three different ways that their relationship might develop from that initial meeting point: whether Eva decides to decline his help or whether she decides to skip class and have coffee with him, and whether she decides to break up with her boyfriend for him. I will say that it took a while to keep the stories straight among the three versions - while there are many overlaps in the broader strokes of their lives, especially in things that happen to extended family members, there are slightly different career paths and names/number of children etc. for the main two characters, so it could be a bit jarring to switch among the versions - but once I was into it, I was sort of surprised how engrossing I found it. Essentially it just tells the story of Eva and Jim from the time they were college aged until they approach their 80s, with all of the ordinary things that happen in a life, but they are characters who are compelling, and the writing is such that you care about them and what happens next, even if it's not some wildly engrossing fictional plot. And then the added switching among versions of course makes it very interesting to find out how the 3 different ways that their relationship might have started can make that relationship turn out in very different ways, and set them on paths to being very different people in terms of marriage/fidelity, career/potential resentment toward a spouse's career, and so on.
3.5/5 stars
Maybe in Another Life
At age 29, Hannah is still trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life, having lived in many different cities and tried a bunch of different jobs. When she moves back home to LA, staying in her best friend Gabby's guest room, she encounters one moment where a decision will make her life play out very differently: out at a bar with Gabby one evening, she runs into her high school boyfriend, Ethan. There seems to be an immediate spark between them again, but she debates - go home with Ethan, or go home with Gabby? The book is written in alternating chapters describing the outcome of one scenario vs. the other, actually showing the
what might have been. They quickly become quite different story lines, but with both, we think about fate and true love, whether it's true that things are "meant to be" or whether it's our choices that lead us to outcomes. This is a fun contemporary women's/romance type read with an interesting twist, given these parallel universes - I thought it could have been cheesy or confusing, but I actually rather liked both story lines, so it was fun to see how it all played out both in terms of the romantic interest but also in terms of the friendship between Hannah and Gabby, as well as the different routes Hannah finds to personal growth. Light but not
too light, it's a great beach type read.
3.5/5 stars
Love and Other Words
Settling in to life as a pedatrics resident and fiancee of a successful, slightly older man, Macy is suddenly upended by a chance encounter with her teenage love, Elliot. Even after a decade of not speaking to each other, their chemistry is immediately evident - especially in contrast to Macy's current relationship - and so it inevitably brings up questions of what might have been, had some (as yet unrevealed) major incident not suddenly end their relationship. This one uses "then" and "now" alternating story lines to explore how the relationship developed from their time reading together as kids, what incident led to the heartbreak, and how now 10 years later Macy and Elliot are working through memories that have been clouded all these years by the "what might have been" feelings, along with exploring the "meant to be" feelings of potentially rekindling their love. I will admit, this is not a story that has really stuck with me (I read it almost a year ago and had to do some major plot summary reading to remember anything about it), but I had a seriously enjoyable reading experience during it - again, a great vacation type of read with being light and romancey but not overly fluffy - so it still gets:
3.5/5 stars
The Immortalists
Four siblings hear of a traveling psychic who has set up shop in an apartment nearby, and they sneak out one summer day to visit her, and one at a time, they each learn her prediction for the date and time of their death. From there, the story follows one sibling at a time as they approach the date they were given - and through how they choose to live their lives in light of this knowledge, the reader can't help but wonder whether they would want to have this knowledge or not (for me: not). The siblings struggle with the predictions in their own ways, with the career choices they make, and especially with some self-destructive paths that they set their live on, and we're left to wonder whether the predictions actually reflect fate, or whether they end up driving their own destiny to this end point because of how they are emotionally responding to the idea that they might die at a certain day/time. Perhaps if they had never seen this psychic, they would have all chosen different paths for themselves, and their lives would have turned out very differently. A super fascinating premise, and it got me thinking a lot - but it also had some flaws, I thought, with a couple of the siblings just not being as well developed, and one in particular just not acting in a way that seemed believable to the rest of the story. I did like how the siblings all had very different career paths, so each section involved many different interesting things, from the life of a magician to the life of a scientist researching longevity, which kept it engaging even when the plot lines might have felt a little disconnected.
3.5/5 stars
A Place for Us
This book would most likely be described as a character-driven story of complicated family relationships, but I think the last section, in which one of the family members in particular reflects on how a relationship with an estranged child came to be, and how parenting decisions might have gotten it to that state. This is not a linearly told story, but is more snapshots of the life of this family through time, showing how the ways families choose to respond to each other in situations can mold their relationships going forward. So the snippets of narrative about the family's life look at things like the parents' arranged marriage and immigration from India, the interactions of their three children growing up, how the family responded to 9/11 and also to the death of a family friend, how the children handle the growing up in the dichotomy of American culture and also the Islamic Indian culture of their parents, etc. Through these snapshots we see the strains in some of the sibling/parent relationships that lead to an estrangement, and then how the family responds to that brother's return home for his sister's wedding. It reminded me in structure and emotional feeling of Ann Patchett's
Commonwealth, but with an added cultural element that I really liked. And while non-linear, character-driven things are not usually my first choice, this one is very engaging, and that last section that I mentioned is just such a moving and empathetic and beautiful look at the emotions of a parent looking at their grown children that I still can't stop thinking about it. A great read.
4.5/5 stars
I liked the alternate reality type of story lines better than I expected to in both of the cases above - but I'm not sure I can think of any other examples from previous books I've read, besides time travel type books like
11/22/63 or
The Time Traveler's Wife. Any ideas from your archives?
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