Bridge review: An essential entrant into the multiverse genre

Bridge
Lauren Beukes (Penguin Random House)

WHICH decision was it for you? We all have that self we still hold in our mind as the one we could or should have become, its shining splendour casting a pall on the reality of how we actually turned out due to the series of haphazard choices we made before we understood their ramifications. It all started with that one decision that put us on the divergent path.

What if you could find the universe where you took the correct series of forks in the correct series of roads and everything turned out exactly how you dreamed? And what if you could take that life for yourself?

That is the premise of Bridge, Lauren Beukes’s take on the multiverse. Bridge’s mother, Jo, has contracted a brain tumour and died – or maybe Jo has been able to escape into a better version of her own life. Cryptic clues Jo left for Bridge point to this possibility, or maybe to the fact that her fatal tumour made her lose her grip on reality before she lost her life. To find out, Bridge (and her best friend Dom) must unravel a lifetime’s worth of intrigue.

It wouldn’t be much of a 500-page sci-fi novel if there weren’t a door to another universe, so it is no spoiler to say there is. The question is why, and will Bridge follow her mother into the right one? What else is waiting there?

You will have noticed that sci-fi is currently at peak multiverse. Every other book – not to mention movie – seems to engage with this trope, now so ubiquitous that even the Marvel Cinematic Universe has inflicted it on us. Why? Possibly because the multiverse genre reflects the universality of our longing for a control group for our life choices.

There may be no better vehicle for this exploration than motherhood, famously laden with cultural baggage. Whichever choice you make, it is a one-way door. Jo is a brilliant neuroscientist, and by all accounts a less-than-brilliant mother. But, more than anything, she is a person who found a way to undo her own decisions, to unravel her life so she could weave it back together in the configuration that would give her everything she wanted.

But what happens when you get everything you want? In her obsessive search for the universe where she has made all the correct decisions, Jo trails a vast wake of damage. This is why Bridge is an essential entrant into the multiverse genre. It demonstrates the one crucial flaw in the entire multiverse fantasy: human nature.

Social scientists have identified two main cognitive styles people fall into when making decisions. Maximisers endlessly obsess over the optimal choice; satisficers simply try to do the next right thing. Sometimes, less is more. Maximisers, it turns out, take longer to agonise about their decisions, sometimes becoming too overwhelmed to make a choice at all. They are also far more likely to regret the decision they made.

Suppose you found one perfect reality. Would you be happy? Or does the existence of an infinite multiverse offer the possibility of something even better? Having infinite choices could prevent us from being happy with any option.

Bridge’s chase after her mother is, by turns, a bracing meditation on what it means to make choices and entertaining cerebrotrash. Will she find the right universe? Will she find a monster that infests its host, making them obsessively seek better realities? The twists and epiphanies kept me turning every last page.

Sally also recommends…

Everything Everywhere All at Once
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
If you want more of the mother-daughter multiverse, this is an intriguing outing.

Self-Portrait with Nothing
Aimee Pokwatka (Tordotcom)
Could there be a parallel universe in which Pepper’s mother doesn’t reject her? A delicate, touching story woven into a thrilling race against time.

Sally Adee is a technology and science writer based in London. Follow her on Twitter @sally_adee

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