Helen Schulman’s Many Worlds

Cliché, but true: we are nothing if not the sum of our choices. Decisions, from the vital to the seemingly infinitesimal, shape our lives. But what if we had the power to glimpse our alternate realities? Who would we be if we attended another school? Lived in a different city? Loved someone else? If these roads not taken could be explored—say, through a virtual reality app—what would we want to know?

Such is the hypothetical posed in Helen Schulman’s latest novel, Come With Me. The book’s protagonist, Amy Ryan, is a mother of three boys, and her husband is in the midst of a mid-life crisis. Sole breadwinner for her family, Amy works part-time in PR, and part time as a guinea pig for a startup run out of a Stanford dorm room. Over the course of the book, Amy is given the opportunity to glimpse her various lives—multiverses, as Schulman calls them. Meanwhile her actual universe is crumbling: Amy’s out-of-work-journalist-husband, Dan, lies about his whereabouts, disappearing to Fukushima to report on the aftermath of nuclear meltdown. This deceit is only made worse by the fact that Dan is bound for Japan with a seductive young photographer, Maryam.

Technology has long been a fascination for Schulman, who explored the effects of digital privacy,. But while is set in tech-obsessed Silicon Valley, the novel’s beating heart is more in tune with the day-to-day: attachment, teen fragility, and—as Schulman says—“how hard it is being a girl.”