Five friends meet at Spanish Gardens the evening of December
20, 2012, roughly 20 years after they last met at the same
restaurant to celebrate their college graduation. John,
Olivia, Quincy, Ellen and Simon share stories and long-
buried secrets over the best-ever Irish coffees. But more
than that, each time one of them leaves the table, they
receive instructions from the enigmatic manager, Ariel. They
enter the bathroom with the out-of-order sign on it and have
the chance to opt for a new life or return to the table and
the one they just left. It's fitting that the characters
face these choices on the night before the end of the world.
The story alternates between discussion at the table in the
present and the life options of each of the friends.
According to an interview with Alma Alexander, Spanish
Gardens was a real place she frequented while in college and
as the story says, it has no signposts, so one had to learn
about it from someone already in the know.
It's an interesting story and the choices the friends face
are amazingly difficult: do you give up true love or your
children for one example or is life better as a male or as a
female? It also gives one food for thought: What would you
change about your life if you had the chance to do things
differently? Would you make different choices? Did you make
choices for the wrong reasons? Speaking for myself, in some
instances, there are things I'd do over given the chance.
But hindsight is 20/20, and 2012: MIDNMIGHT AT SPANISH
GARDENS is a well-written tale with terrific characters a
food for thought. This is my first book by Alma Alexander,
and I look forward to exploring more of her work.
The novel asks the universal question: What if…? What if you could make a different choice at a critical moment in your life? What if you had married someone else, turned right instead of left, had taken that job that you refused? What if you had been born a man instead of a woman? The story opens on the eve of the end of the world, Dec. 20, 2012, when five friends meet in Spanish Gardens, the restaurant where they had celebrated their college graduation 20 years before. They reminisce – and reveal long-held and disturbing secrets about their dysfunctional lives. Each friend in turn is given a curious set of instructions by an enigmatic bartender named Ariel: “Your life is filled with crossroads and you are free to choose one road or another at any time. Stepping through this door takes away all choices except two — the choice to live a different life, or return to this one.” All of them pass through the portal and into drastically changed lives. They change occupations and families; one changes gender; a woman falls in love — with another woman. In the end, four choose to return to their original lives. One doesn’t.
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