Yes, this is only my third book of the year…but in an alternate life it’s my 31st

How many versions of your life have you imagined? Is there any way to know that we are living in the best possible outcome? And if so, at whose expense might that be? Is there a way to somehow keep track of all the possibilities, or do they exist outside of time as we know it?

These are questions that Rebecca doesn’t have time to think about. She lives in the not too distant future, where Facebook is still a thing, but self-driving cars are the norm. It’s a now where no one blinks an eye when the President comments on your daily life via your restaurant’s table screen over hamburgers and fries. Rebecca, a part-time customer service rep for the online-dating service, Lovability, occupies her thoughts and time with her son, a drinking problem, and a physicist husband whose life work is a device that doesn’t seem to work. It is more appropriate to say that the existential questions of time are left to Phillip, whose stress of constant negative results is second only to his worry that people call his device a time-machine.

Palmer peppers his story with a supporting cast of characters, as well as online dating anecdotes, some big brother paranoia, salacious affairs, secret government projects, and tragedy. He also explores issues of grief and race, which seemed more as asides, but there were a few interesting moments with both that I felt were eye-opening to say the least. This is a story about cause and effect and the things we do to disrupt the delicate fabric that keeps our relationships and everything we hold dear in place. It’s about the possibilities that could be, those we’ve left behind, and the realities of the moments we have left.

Palmer’s writing style is dry – I didn’t find myself laughing at much, or even liking a lot of his characters – but as the story unfolded, I became more engrossed in it.  While, at first, I wasn’t certain how I felt about the book, I couldn’t imagine a better outcome for the ending.