If life has infinite realities and you exist in all, imagine being able to choose in which world you would you’d rather exist.

Bridge follows Bridget Kattinger and her neuroscientist mother Jo as they navigate the complexities of living and dying or not wanting to die.  They hopscotch through realities or alternate universes for the perfect life or the life they feel would best mend their aches, all the while playing God over involuntary victims. 

Set in America, New Orleans, Lauren Beukes takes us on an adventure of not only the continent but the complexities of existing, wishing, rectifying and wanting to undo some of your lived choices together with their consequences. It is also an interrogation on whether the decisions we make in the reality we exist in are worth living through or trading for another life. The more she interrogates, the more she reveals the monster or monsters within.

She explores so many crucial themes around the human psyche and dilemma of existence, including the inescapable make up of being human, such as greed, righteousness, corruption, regret, impulse, addiction, control and power. Most loud, for me was the general dissatisfaction human beings breed about their realities and lives, this hope that somewhere out there, there is a better you than the current … and what this hope can lead us to do. Intertwined with that is this overwhelming sense of entitlement, as though you, and only you, are owed by life.

Lauren explores mother-daughter relationships (mostly dysfunctional), father daughter relationships, also dysfunctional in their own ways, friendships, non-binary/queer representation, how far you’d go to stay alive or to keep someone living in your world and what warrants the trust we put in strangers.

This is an intricate story that interrogates who you are and who you’ve chosen to be and whether you’re willing to sit in the murk or the crystal blue waters of the consequences of your choices. Told in numerous perspectives, it forces the reader to be alert and pay attention to the nuances the perspectives invoke. It is also a tale of grief, and how far we’re willing to lose ourselves, harm ourselves and others while seeking to heal loss.

The story is layered with so many complexities, so many quotable moments and a lifetime of epiphanies, oh and let’s not forget the various, sometimes shapeshifting multitude of villains and heroes.

It is a thrill and an adventure to read, very well crafted and once you find the sweet spot, it’s unputdownable!