REVIEWING
The Other Life
by Ellen Meister
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 2011 | 312 pages
Reviewed by Janet Garber
Port Me No Portals
Life may be going on right this instant in another dimension, mirroring our own, while diverging in some unsuspected particulars. Of course there are the scientific speculations (Many-Worlds theory), religious interpretations (Hinduism and Islam) and legions of sci-fi renditions.
In the 90’s TV show, Sliders, teenager Quinn Mallory (Jerry O’Connell) and his buddies went “sliding” into a different alternate universe every week. Sometimes the new world looked like a perfect replica until they found that penicillin had never been discovered, or dinosaurs still strutted their stuff, or red-lipped vampires were fronting rock bands. Always the crew decided to try to get home one more time, nothing being quite as alluring to them as the life they left in “Kansas.”
Ellen Meister puts this time-honored device in the service of one young mother, Quinn Braverman, who, from a young age, senses that she has the ability to move into another world via portals which appear as fissures in the foundation of her house, holes in a coral reef in the bottom of the ocean, and recesses in a fireplace in an old church.
Quinn has often wondered whether she married the right guy, stable, loving, sexy Lewis, and when life in the here and now suddenly takes a turn for the worse, she can no longer resist the temptation to see what’s on the other side.
She finds her old boyfriend, needy and narcissistic as ever, and learns that in this second world, she has been living with him for ten years, they’ve never married, and she has no children.
He is a minor celebrity radio shock-jock, who hobnobs with exciting people and goes to the best parties. And they have the nicest apartment in Manhattan. How can her life on Long Island, as the pregnant mother of a 6 year old, married to the owner of a fleet of taxis begin to compare? Add to this the fact that she still finds herself sexually attracted to her old love and ready to act on that impulse.
For this concept to work in this novel, there would have to be some tension about which life Quinn will ultimately choose for herself. But look at the book jacket and learn that Meister herself lives on L.I., married and mother of three, and do you really think you can’t guess what her character will decide? Meister undoubtedly suspected that the boyfriend was not enough of a pull and gave the other life a better draw.
Quinn’s mother, who committed suicide years earlier in this world, is still alive over there and Quinn has questions for her that she absolutely needs to have answered.
This is a more compelling subject than the usual love triangle, and Meister does a good job in conveying the love and closeness of Quinn and her mother, and Quinn’s relationship with her son and unborn daughter.
In my estimation, Meister should have dropped the idea of portals to the unknown, and recounted a straightforward story of love, family, and relationships. The “science” of these portals is never quite worked out – Quinn just “senses” when a portal is near and “senses” what is going on on the other side before she takes her leap. She intuits that she must immerse herself in ice water to reverse the trip.
She doesn’t explain why there is a Quinn in the second world who vanishes when she appears for a visit, with no one in her world to pick up her son from the bus stop when she’s stuck in the portal. At a crucial point, she manages to find the exact spot in the ocean (!) where the portal spewed her out and jumps back in for the return trip. C’mon people, this is all a bit too silly.
As long as I’m griping, what kind of a name is Quinn for a Jewish woman? Until I discovered the connection to Sliders, I found this name to be rather jarring. Contemporary issues (abortion, gay marriage) figure prominently in the story but I’m not sure realistically. On the positive side, though, Meister writes well, and gets us to care about Quinn, her men, her gay brother and his partner, and of course, her mother.
Her husband is a paragon of virtue, her little boy is precious, her brother is loving and supportive, and her old boyfriend still loves and misses her – what a life! But of course, there’s a rub and an imposing and terrible one that keeps her jumping from one world to the other, finally choosing the one where she is needed the most.
If you’ve ever felt like checking out of reality when the going gets rough (and who hasn’t?), then you will side with Quinn’s squeezing into fissures behind the ironing board in her cellar to slide into her other life. It’s patently not a better life, but she learns what she learns, and gets back in time to confront her (and our) worst demons and make some very brave decisions about going forward.
The rest of us, Piaf-style (“Non, rien de rien, non, je ne regrette rien”), will be happy to only occasionally visit the fork in the road when we decided not to move to New York from Kansas, drop out of the PhD program, or give up our dream of being a trapeze artist. We’ve made our peace with our destinies and, gratefully have no need to run off and rejoin the circus now. The only sliding we’re ever going to do is at the neighborhood playground, right behind all our happy little boys and girls.
Book Club Aficionados: check out Meister’s website www.ellenmeister.com – she provides some thought-provoking questions for group discussions.