There are few things reality TV audiences love more than a real transformation. There is the discovery of little-known talent (American Idol, America’s Got Talent), which takes ordinary people out of insignificance and turns them into stars. There is a whole arc about marital relationships (The Bachelor, love is blind) in less time than it takes to assemble a piece of IKEA furniture. There is a cosmetic surgery that went horribly wrong (The botched swan) that transform deceived hopefuls into nightmarish versions of themselves. In this context, the premise of Peng Shepherd’s (The cartographers) third novel seems entirely plausible: The latest reality show to take the nation by storm is All this and morein which an ordinary, unfulfilled, repentant human being can use quantum mechanics to try out every possible version of himself before settling on a newer, better, brighter, perfect Persona.
The darling of the first season was Talia Cruz, a serious woman turned talk show personality. Her televised journey was very Charlie in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, carried to heaven on soap bubbles with no thought for what happens when they burst. It’s like Kelly Clarkson with tears in her eyes watching “A Moment Like This” in the American Idol finale as we sob happily with her. The same goes for Marsh, the star of season three, who has actually been waiting a lifetime for such a moment. Or rather, several moments: “bubbles” in the parallel universe where she goes to law school as planned (before that life was derailed by motherhood), where she reconciles with her cheating husband, where she rekindles her relationship with her high school sweetheart. Since Marshmallow has never shaken off her unfortunate nickname, she’d rather throw herself into the metaphorical flames than be afraid of getting a little hot.
The fact that our heroine is a divorced mother in her forties who is too shy to let people know her real name (which, interestingly, we never learn) should tell you enough about how bleak her prospects are. But wait, what about All this and more Season 2? That is the big secret that follows Marsh from bubble to bubble as she experiments with the aforementioned retcons of her life – guided, Quantum leap-Style, from Talia Cruz herself, who has ascended to the ultimately all-powerful role of reality TV producer.
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All this and more
All this and more
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And if Marsh’s possible life paths are not perfect enough, Talia whips out the show bible (a wonderfully cheeky detail) and sends Marsh into scenarios she’d never considered before. Shepherd makes the experience even more metaphysical by inviting you, the reader, to do what reality TV viewers can’t: The book is structured as an homage to choose-your-own-adventure books, in which you choose Marsh’s next bubble in exponentially branching paths. Yet these attempts to satisfy her need for otherworldly thrills and once-in-a-lifetime experiences—being a nature photographer battling an erupting volcano, a telenovela star beloved around the world, and even a high-stakes poker champion—only leave Marsh wanting more more more more. A live-streamed audience chat running in their field of vision alludes to the parasocial issues of viewers who get too emotionally involved with reality TV stars, although in this case it’s mostly anonymous users cheering on even the most outlandish plot twists. Not to mention an unexpected ally once things start to get Really strange.
Each scenario features the same players: Marsh’s ex Dylan and her daughter Harper, her new crush (and high school love) Ren, her best friend and co-worker Jo. But as the bubble throws ever crazier life at Marsh, these familiar faces begin to distort, utter phrases that don’t fit the scene, and become virtual strangers – raising questions about the bubble’s impact not only on their lives, but on the lives of the people who couldn’t sign the RealTV waiver.
It’s an ambitious premise, not least because Shepherd balances a Venn diagram of readership: reality TV fans, fans of speculative fiction, and the (presumably considerable) overlap between the two. It’s very imaginatively thought out, and shows a shrewd understanding that, yes, if the US has mastered quantum mechanics, the first application would while creating alternative realities that function according to the ridiculous rules of reality TV And Profit from the viewership of the millions who want to witness the poor decisions of this poor fool.
Unfortunately, the book itself does too much to announce the big “twists” in Marsh’s season. It quickly becomes obvious which love interest Marsh should pursue, although it’s a lot of fun to see them intentionally steered in the other’s direction. It helps that this isn’t just about handing out roses. The Multiverse Bachelorette; her ambitions for a career as a lawyer, her unfulfilled wanderlust, and her hopes for her daughter Harper’s musical talent are all tied to both men, making her choices significantly more difficult. No matter what part of her life she pushes to the extreme, something else always has to be sacrificed.
By contrast, the conspiracy behind the bubble and the Chrysalis Effect that follows Marsh through each stage of her life is too convoluted to really generate any suspense. It’s possible that this is due to the specific order in which I read the book, but I think that’s also a problem embedded in the premise no matter how you read it: To show a flaw in the machine, it has to come up so many times that there can’t be much subtlety. Again, so much repetition makes it a little easy for the reader to expect the big reveal, though it fits well with this larger commentary on selfish human nature and the callousness with which we flatten reality TV characters into sources of entertainment, forgetting that they’re real people.
As far as I can tell, Shepherd saves the promised multiple endings for the end of the book, rather than a typical CYOA where the story comes to a sudden (and often gruesome and/or scary) halt a third, half, or three-quarters of the way through. Instead, as the TV series’ requirement for the season finale dictates, Marsh must choose a permanent path in life. But really you are whoever is allowed to turn this page (or click on the hyperlink in the e-book), as Marsh’s final decision regarding her continued involvement in All this and more is divided into three different scenarios. Each is delightfully disturbing, proving that the experience has got under her skin, that she has developed new tics and a new awareness of being watched and manipulating reality. In fact, that’s a pretty apt description for anyone who has been through the grind of reality TV. So in that respect, it succeeds. But as a book that might have questioned quantum mechanics as profoundly as its physicist characters, All this and more does not examine the issue as carefully as it could.
Kudos to Shepherd for not giving any easy answers to any of the results. There is no happy ending for All this and more; the reader feels as though they have experienced Marsh’s life and then forgotten it. I just wish the journey itself had had the same high expectations as its destination.
All this and more is published by William Morrow.
