Amy Reed is burnt out: her PR job at a tech startup has
essentially
become babysitting her college roommate's college-aged son,
Donny,
who happens to be Silicon Valley's latest wunderkind and
her boss, her
out-of-work journalist husband, Dan, is going through some
kind of
existential crisis, her teenage son, Jack, is doing who
knows what with
his girlfriend, and the eight-year-old twins, Thing One
(Miles) and
Thing Two (Theo), are both thriving and suffering at school.
But when
Donny asks her to become his guinea pig for his latest
venture -
exploring the infinite outcomes of someone's life based on
changing
the slightest decision, creating "multiverses" and
therefore, different
lives seen through virtual reality - Amy starts to wonder if
this life is the
one that was meant to be...
Meanwhile, Dan is asking questions about his own life. It's
been years
since he had a steady job, and he knows the burden on Amy to
provide
for their entire family is taking its toll on them both, as
well as on their
finances. He meets the enigmatic Maryam by chance and finds
himself
lying to his family and traveling with her to Japan to write
a report on
the still dangerous effects radiation has on the country.
It's here,
across the world, that Dan wonders if he's made the right
decision in
coming and if his life could be different, or even better...
Amy and Dan's sons, Jack, Miles, and Theo, are attempting
to figure
things out for themselves as well. Jack's girlfriend
recently moved to
Texas, and they spend almost every waking moment together over
Facetime and social media; she even "joins" the family for
dinner every
night. Jack thinks she's the one but do they really have a
connection
when they're actually so far apart? Theo is being accused
of bullying at
school, and Miles, well... Miles is always in another world,
reading a
book or playing video games.
But when a tragedy takes place, Amy, Dan, and their sons
have to come
together to find out if they can be a family again. And
every decision
they make can change the ultimate outcome...
COME WITH ME by Helen
Schulman is an interesting, thoughtful novel - who among us
hasn't
thought "what if" about various situations throughout our
lives? The
idea of an algorithm that could show us different outcomes
is both
intriguing and terrifying, like Amy, the first person to
test out this
technology, soon finds out. The ability to discover what
could have
happened in her life comes at a strange time in her current
reality; with
her home life in flux, she had already been thinking about
things on her
own. At the same time, while Amy spends most of the time
just thinking
about these events, her husband, Dan, is actually making a
life-altering
decision, one that will change the dynamic of his family in
more ways
than one. Their sons, while young, are growing up and forming
behaviors that will shape the rests of their lives. The tech
side of things
in COME WITH ME, while not too
overwhelming, definitely has a strong undercurrent
throughout the
whole book. It reminded me of the film Eternal Sunshine of
the Spotless
Mind, but instead of forgetting things, users find out more
than they'll
ever be able to fully understand. Additionally, minor
characters play
major roles and make this a rich and rewarding novel to read.
From Helen Schulman, the acclaimed author of the New York
Times bestseller This Beautiful Life, comes another
"gripping, potent, and blisteringly well-written story of
family, dilemma, and consequence" (Elizabeth Gilbert)—a
mind-bending novel set in Silicon Valley that challenges
our modern constructs of attachment and love, purpose and
fate.
"What do you want to know?"
Amy Reed works part-time as a PR person for a tech start-
up, run by her college roommate’s nineteen-year-old son,
in Palo Alto, California. Donny is a baby genius, a
junior at Stanford in his spare time. His play for
fortune is an algorithm that may allow people access to
their "multiverses"—all the planes on which their
alternative life choices can be played out simultaneously
—to see how the decisions they’ve made have shaped their
lives.
Donny wants Amy to be his guinea pig. And even as she
questions Donny’s theories and motives, Amy finds herself
unable to resist the lure of the road(s) not taken. Who
would she be if she had made different choices, loved
different people? Where would she be now?
Amy’s husband, Dan—an unemployed, perhaps unemployable,
print journalist—accepts a dare of his own, accompanying
a seductive, award-winning photographer named Maryam on a
trip to Fukushima, the Japanese city devastated by
tsunami and meltdown. Collaborating with Maryam, Dan
feels a renewed sense of excitement and possibility he
hasn’t felt with his wife in a long time. But when crisis
hits at home, the extent of Dan’s betrayal is exposed
and, as Amy contemplates alternative lives, the couple
must confront whether the distances between them in the
here and now are irreconcilable.
Taking place over three non-consecutive but vitally
important days for Amy, Dan, and their three sons, Come
with Me is searing, entertaining, and unexpected—a dark
comedy that is ultimately both a deeply romantic love
story and a vivid tapestry of modern life.
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