All about Us

I managed to get an ARC of this book, which is due for release in October 2020. Despite the fact that it didn’t seem like the usual sort of book I’d read - I tend to stick to urban fantasy or crime and this is a strange twist on A Christmas Carol, Sliding Doors and Groundhog Day - I really enjoyed it.

This is a book that is about those moments in life which actually turn out to be more important than you ever imagined. About decisions we make and how we see the world and why. Would we make the same choices again? What if there was something that we missed at a certain point which may have made us view something differently? How does our view of ourselves match up with reality and do we like either?

Ben is wallowing in his mistakes - teetering on the precipice of an even larger one - in what he thinks are missed chances and opportunities. What would have happened if he’d made a different choice on the night he met his wife Daphne? Should he have he acted on the frisson he felt for his old university friend Alice? Which woman was right for him? Are his marital issues with Daphne because they were never right for each other all along, and would his life have been better with Alice?

He meets an old man selling knock off Rolexes in the pub on Christmas Eve 2020, after yet another tense discussion with Daphne. He’s supposed to be decorating the Christmas tree and wrapping the presents while Daphne attends her works do alone, because he doesn’t want to make the effort with her workmates, but has decided to get drunk with his best mate Harv instead, as self pitying man babies like to do. While he is toying with the idea of telling Harv all about his emotional issues and marital woes, the old man offers to sell him a watch. He refuses, but the old man insists and ends up gifting him a - broken as it turns out - watch. After doing some wallowing and not talking about his feelings, he goes home and decides to crack open the expensive bottle of red wine that Daphne has bought for Christmas Day with her family rather than fulfil his promise to get the house ready. He eventually decides to take himself off to the attic for the decorations and stumbles, quite literally, upon a box of Daphne’s possessions from the play they were doing when they met at uni. Inexplicably angered by this proof that his wife loves him, he ends up passing out in the attic.

When he awakes he finds himself back in his dorm room from his first term at uni, on the day of the play, which is the night he meets, and kisses, Daphne for the first time. He stumbles through the evening, somewhat in shock, as you would be had you travelled back in time 15 years and were a gangly 20 year old again. He experiences his first encounter with Daphne again, and relives the excitement and joy he felt back then. He remembers how the night didn’t go exactly as he’d always pictured it. He’d believed that his kiss with Daphne had been fate, that he could easily have ended up kissing Alice that night, but he realises that he actually knowingly made a choice which would lead him to kiss Daphne. Afterwards, rather than awkwardly leave, as most 20 year olds would, he manages to prolong the evening until they innocently fall asleep in each other’s arms in his dorm room.

When he awakes he’s in his childhood bedroom, on Christmas Eve the next year, the day that Daphne and his mum meet. In the present Ben has lost his mum, and is guilt stricken at the circumstances and how he’d treated her beforehand, so he’s ecstatic and emotional to see her again. The pain and joy is palpable, as he sees this memory through more mature eyes, as he starts to recognise his failings and how they have contributed to the problems he has faced over the years. When he’s sent on an errand by his mum he stumbles across the ‘watch seller’, who urges him to return home. As he returns earlier than he had in reality, he overhears an anecdote from his mother which starts to offer an alternate perspective to his past. He takes the opportunity to really talk to his mum, ask her questions about her life, her ambitions, and he begins to see her as a human being with her own hopes and aspirations, along with her own disappointments. He had lived most of his life without his father, who had cheated on his mother and left them, and he feared that he was predestined to make the same mistakes, due to some hinted indiscretion with Alice, and the plan to meet up for further mistakes. He failed to ever really consider his mum’s feelings about her marriage, and her feelings as she watched her son desperately struggle for a relationship with an absent and uncaring father, one who just happened to be a successful playwright to whom Ben desperately wishes to live up. He spends the evening truly learning about things he’d never even considered, and dreads 11.59pm arriving as he knows that’s when he will jump to the next point in his history.

Ben jumps to other moments from his life, where he either sees things more clearly, or from a new perspective, and he begins to see that the issues he feels have plagued him are entirely of his own making. His selfishness and self pity, his fear of turning into his father, yet his desperate need to live up to the man who had never really shown him anything to live up to, leading him to dwell in his own misery and ignore other people’s pain and triumphs. He realises that he didn’t even know some of Daphne’s successes as she was too busy helping him through his perceived tragedies, and that he never even considered her pain at losing his mum despite knowing how much she loved her. He starts to realise how he has pushed her away, how he has withdrawn into himself and wallowed in his self pity and it is actually that which has caused him the most problems.

He also relives the night that he slept with Alice while he and Daphne were spending time apart, due to his reluctance to get married after nine years due to his fear of turning into his father. He finally realises the excuses he made for his choices, and how his fears became a self fulfilling prophecy. He thought he would become like his father, so he did - despite not really knowing the man in any meaningful way. He finally realises that Daphne is the one for him, that she always has been and always will be. That she was there for him whenever he needed her, but he was never there for her.

When he wakes up on Christmas Day 2020 he thinks he has another chance to make things right with Daphne, but he’s still in the middle of his lesson. Despite finally starting to make an effort, it’s all thwarted when Daphne finds his phone, and sees the chain of messages between him and Alice, she is heartbroken at his betrayal and asks him to leave.

In his next jump he gets to see the future he seemed to want. He’s engaged to Alice, with a successful career at her dad’s firm, and living in a swanky flat. By this point though he has already realised what he truly wants, and it’s not this sterile, bitter and loveless existence. He wants Daphne. Unfortunately she is now with somebody else, and it seems that his fate is sealed.

Luckily for Ben (debatable about it being lucky for Daphne) he wakes up back in the attic in 2020, with Daphne asking him why he’s sleeping in the attic - perfectly valid question. He takes the opportunity to tell her everything that has held him back for years, his feelings about his mum and the awful things he said to her before she died, how he felt about his dad and his failed career, and about Alice. Predictably Daphne does not take this news well and the couple spend time apart while she decides what she wants - which for once Ben actually cares about more than his own desires.

I won’t tell you how it ends, suffice to say it’s a very satisfactory conclusion, if a little predictable, but this book was never meant to break new ground. It’s a great modern spin on an age old tale and idea, of getting the chance to see your life and your choices, good or bad, mistakes and triumphs, through new eyes. What would you do if you could change things? Are you as happy as you ever could be or is there more that you missed along the way? I have to say as someone who was cheated on I wasn’t expecting to like Ben at all, and at times I found his self pity to be irritating beyond belief, but I like the fact that he started to own his mistakes and his feelings, and stops putting his own needs first and, well, only. Daphne isn’t especially prominent despite her large role in the story, but I actually like that tactic, because at the root of it this is about Ben finally standing on his own two feet and living his life without relying on everyone else to carry him through. Daphne is important, as are the other characters, and we see enough of her to know she deserves much better than she’s endured with Ben for 15 years, but the focus is very much not on her actions but his. We see a similar amount of Alice, just enough to contrast her with Daphne to see Ben’s choices, but again, this story isn’t about Alice and her good points and bad points. It doesn’t really matter because Ben is the person who really needs to figure things out for himself. The fact that he starts to see both women more clearly, and doesn’t romanticise a possible flame anymore, is exactly what’s needed to help him move on from his long lists of ‘what ifs?’ to realise that the problem has lain with him all along. He would never have been happy with Alice for the same reasons his relationship with Daphne was failing, his own issues and unwillingness to open up to the people he loves.

This is a book which manages to juggle light hearted pop culture references with some quite heavy themes, all sprinkled with the light and hope of Christmas, the backdrop to so many successful stories. It’s really a perfect setting for a stories about hope and despair, about finding the right path and the light at the end of the tunnel, and yes, the pain that we feel missing loved ones at this time for family and love. Christmas can be a lonely time, but it can also be a time of hope and this book really encapsulates that.

This doesn’t feel too heavy, it’s a nice read and provokes some questions without being preachy or making excuses for its protagonist. I’d highly recommend giving it a read and letting yourself answer the questions it poses, and seeing if you fall into any of the traps that Ben does. I’d bet we all have at some point in our lives!

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Thanks to NetGalley and HQ for the ARC