Punctured bicycle, on a hillside desolate

Week 48: The Versions of Us – Laura Barnett
Recommended by: Katherine Byrne

You wait ages for a book with an interesting concept and then two come along at once. At least that's a little bit what it feels like when The Versions of Us was being pitched to me: two people meet by chance and from that point three different versions of events unfold. To which my reaction was "Ah, like Life After Life?" "Um, I've not read it." "You'll have to take my word for it then."

And yes, that's pretty much what you get, the same sort of concept as Kate Atkinson's book, but as told by David Nicholls. It's less opaque than Life After Life and less artistic, swapping this for bittersweetness and a more straightforward narrative thrust. Thus the reader follows the intertwining lives of Eva and Jim, who meet in Cambridge after a near miss with a bicycle. What you get are three romances, taking place contemporaneously from this first meeting through to last rites.

None of them are straightforward – life's infinite complexities over such a long period of time put paid to that – and perhaps while none of them are truly happy, none of them are depressingly sad, and all of them feel real enough. Some have more luck in love and work in one version, another moreso in another. Both Eva and Jim, particularly the latter, are developed in different ways, allowing the reader to see different facets of their personality, and are ably backed by a strong supporting cast. Some of these are more presences than fleshed out characters, who flit in and out and help drive things forward; others, notably Ted and Vivian, left more of a mark on me.

As it is effectively three stories told inside one fairly standard length book, chunks of life have to be skipped out, creating something of a patchwork effect. That said, life is often mundane and little happens, so unless you're narrating a day in the life of Leopold Bloom or tweeting every minor triumph and disappointment of your life, it makes sense to focus on key events. And part of the book's point is that key events could be chance meetings or moments that seem of little importance at the time but have long-term implications. It's a confident debut, well-told and likeable enough to avoid lapsing too far into clichcé, and would make (in a good way) a great holiday read.