Dear readers, Recently my colleague MJ Franklin made a literary prediction: It’s going to be a doppelgänger summer. (He should know; he’s a twin.) As evidence, he mentioned two new novels that approach doubles from intriguing new angles. What’s a solution to midlife malaise? Find a look-alike who also shares some biographical detail, and swap lives. This is the premise of Isabel Waidner’s book “As If” (I can only hear the title in Cher Horowitz’s voice), which follows two men in London who find novelty and even some freedom in playing the role of someone else, no matter his failures. Doesn’t a vacation from your own shortcomings sound nice? And in “Sublimation,” Isabel J. Kim uses the idea of clones to explore a poignant dilemma of leaving home. In her universe, people split into two “instances” when they emigrate: one who moves on to the new country and one who stays behind. Each continues living on a parallel path, but if they touch when they reunite they merge back into one person. If you’ve ever gazed at a cousin who grew up halfway across the world, or wondered what parts of a loved one got left behind at various points in life, I think you’ll find this novel meaningful. Finally, on this week’s podcast, the best-selling author Ryan Holiday discussed how his relationship to Cormac McCarthy’s novel “The Road” changed after becoming a father. You can listen to the full episode by clicking on the video below. See you next week.
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