You Were Meant For Me

What-if kind of stories are extremely popular right now, which I'm all for. If it's done dextrously, I enjoy a good parallel universe story as much as the next guy, so Laura Barnett's 2016 book The Versions of Us pretty easily elbowed its way to the top of my library list. Absolutely every review, every blurb, and every webpage I've seen regarding this book goes out of its way to use the phrase "One Day meets Sliding Doors", and I enjoyed both of those, so why not? A few pages into The Versions of Us, it is 1958, and fellow college students Jim Taylor and Eva Edelstein meet when she has a near miss with her bicycle. They hit it off right away, and so begins a grand romance that spans decades. Or falls apart. Or they don't meet at all.

The narrative splits into three versions, told concurrently. The events of Jim and Eva's lives vary wildly between versions, and naturally, it impacts the other people in their circles, from parents to lovers to friends to children. At the heart of each of the versions, though, there is a bond between them, sometimes strained, or perhaps even invisible, but never broken. They both have personal and professional aspirations, and in different versions, they have alternate levels of success at each of these. In one, Jim may become a popular artist, but be all thumbs at romantic relationships. Eva may find love that nevertheless presents enormous challenges. In one version, one of them may have a studious, polite daughter, while in another, a rebellious, sullen teenager who withdraws from her family.

I really enjoyed how plausible each of the three versions were. None of them were purely "good" or "bad". They just represent three different paths Jim and Eva may have found themselves walking down. The major complaint I've seen about the book is with the interweaving versions making it difficult to keep up with which one you're in, but I didn't mind that too much. Yes, it was sometimes tough to remember which narrative I was dealing with at the outset of each chapter, but it became clear soon enough. If I have one issue with the characters, it's how quickly they fling themselves into major life changes. These things happen, of course, but the regularity of relationships coming together, breaking apart, and leading to pregnancy were a little... Well, "rushed" doesn't seem like the right word, but let's just say that a lot of women find themselves immediately knocked up.

That didn't detract too much from my enjoyment, though. It was a very good book, and as Jim and Eva's lives unspooled, I found myself getting emotional, and even a little teary, as if I were watching an installment of The Up Series. We all often wonder what our lives would be like if we'd taken that job, or we'd never given up piano lessons, or had gone out with Paul when we had the chance. What The Versions of Us does so well is show us that no matter which way we go, we're still us, and that can be a heartening notion.

The Versions of Us: B+