Parallel Universes: Review of The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver has been on my list for a while. Though it isn’t sci-fi, at all, it has something of a mystical/parallel universe element that had me going “hmmmmm.”

Now if I’m being honest, I had a book idea in mind for a while that, on its face, felt similar in theme. Two loves, two lives. Parallel universes. Each compelling and enticing, but neither whole. 

There is also a Sex/Life vibe about this book… reminiscing and wishing for what’s gone versus living in the good (but lacking) present. Though Two Lives didn’t have any abnormally large dongs or public sex, you could definitely see a similar theme. 

And it’s one that I generally like. The question of “what if?” The Sliding Doors potential of a world that’s close, but not quite this one. It all tends to appeal to me. So I picked up this book knowing it wasn’t an exact match for my genre preference, but in the vein of stories that I like. 

Real World, with a Slight Tweak

Two Lives was 95% women’s fiction with just a touch of magical realism. In this book, Lydia Bird’s beloved, perfect fiancé dies and she’s understandably devastated, walking through life in insomnia-riddled grief. Her family encourages her to take sleeping pills to get some rest (I struggled with the approach to pharmaceuticals as magic in this) and amazingly when she conks out with a pill she wakes into a world where her fiancé is alive. 

It’s “sci-fi” to the same degree that The Time Traveler’s Wife is… which sometimes I like. I don’t need lasers and space battles to pick up a book. The read was an easy one, albeit a little predictable, and there was never any intention given towards why this was happening, which makes sense for this story and was fine by me.

The obvious nature of the plot doesn’t make it necessarily unpleasant to read. And in truth it follows a similar recipe to even the most sci-fi driven parallel universe stories. Isn’t the intrigue of these stories the idea that no one life is better than the others? Each comes with its own set of good and bad.

I always like a good conversation about whether we should linger in the past or cement ourselves in the present. I think the gist of most parallel universe stories is that embracing the now is favorable to living in the past. That being said, I do find it hard to believe that anyone should be on board a plot where drug dependency leads to a happy ending. And though that isn’t the message of the story, every time she popped a pill and got a romantic, whirlwind adventure out of it, my anti-pharma core twisted a bit. 

I would have been much more content with a natural hallucinogenic being the trigger, but that’s not as cosmopolitan as a little pink pill.

All-in-all, if you’re cool with chick lit, this book works just fine. I did decide not to pursue the similar story line I had in mind as my next book. I want to sit with the idea for longer and look for an end result to parallel universes that doesn’t feel as prescribed as opting for your present/original timeline/“real world,” despite the allure of the alternate one.

My Own Parallel Universe, What I like about Alternate Timelines  

In The Luxury of Time Travel I had the great pleasure and experience of working in my own alternate universe. As so many time travel stories do, my time travelers had a moment where the shit hits the fan and they end up in a place that looks similar to their world but different in many ways. I’m a sucker for an alternative universe where things aren’t quite as comfortable as they were in the first. The way my book differed from Two Lives is that in Josie Silver’s world the alternate universe was the preferred place to be most of the time. So in my opinion, she didn’t have as much reason to leave hers behind as my main character did.

Either way though, I like playing with alternate universes. I think it forces us to think about the choices we make. What is so intriguing about another world that is similar to ours but with some slight tweaks? Is it that we all wonder if we just change this one thing how it would domino? Or is it that with stories like this, we’re reminded that we’re actually in a constant state of creating parallel universes? With every choice we make and every direction we take we are creating a fork and sometimes it’s fun to turn that fork into an atom bomb.

Parallel Universes IRL

As I thought about it more, some of my all-time favorite sci-fi stories deal in alternate history/parallel universes/time-travel induced flips in reality. So I’ll be sharing some of my favorites in the next blog post.

I also will need to think a little more on how I want to approach the “sci-fi IRL” piece of this. But for now, I’ll leave you with this uber dark video from Geordie Rose (someone who gives me mega creeps) about Parallel Universes and his D-Wave machine.  

For the record, as you might imagine, I very much believe in parallel universes and some of the most empowered people in the world clearly do too since places like Google and Amazon have purchased the above machine to establish contact with and learn from these other universes. While that gives me bone-chilling nightmares, I also believe it’s within the power of the human mind to reach these places. I think it’s what we’re experiencing in moments of deja vu. And I believe that anything their machines can do our minds can do better if we simply free them from the shackles that seek to control our consciousness.