(courtesy Penguin Books Australia)
The multiverse, as the name suggests can accommodate many things but a place in which love can be renewed?
Theoretically possible, true, since pretty much anything is in a sprawling assembly of endlessly diverse universes, but not exactly where you see Cupid doing his best work, right?
Well, think again my jaded multiversal friends because in You & Me and You & Me and You & Me by husband-and-wife writing team Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees, a jaded married couple find that diving into a realm of multiple possibilities might be just what their moribund marriage needs.
But how, in the midst of a relationship long past its sparkling best and a family set-up where the two grown-up kids are disinterested, resentful or both and a home that has well and truly seen better days, can anything even remotely as magical as gallivanting around the multiverse happen?
The genius of this incredibly emotionally grounded grown-up love story where long-time married couple Adam and Jules try to find their way back to each other in the most extraordinary of circumstances is that the gateway to such a fantastical journey of the body and the heart happens in the most banal, if retro of ways.
Instructed to clean out all his junk by a Jules who’s run out of patience with her sentimental, low-key hoarding husband, Adam decides to have one last listen to the mixtapes and CDs he and Jules have given each other right through their relationship.
‘It’s old tech, Adam. Just chuck it.’ Snatching the lid from him, I replace it firmly on the box. ‘Or, I don’t know … recreate them all on Spotify, if you must …’
But from the way he looks at me [Jules], I might as well have thrown the whole box at his head.
It’s just supposed to be a trip down musical memory lane and nothing more, but the moment Adam hits play, his old Sony cassette player hurls into a vortex and back to the time when the mixtape or CD was handed over to the other party.
Once he gets over his shock, and who expects a vintage cassette player to have that kind of power (beside that of fearsomely good nostalgia which can be powerful indeed), Adam is thrilled that for whatever the length of the tape or CD, he can be back in the body of his younger life, reliving pivotal moments that were obviously important enough to have a collection of songs assembled to celebrate or mark them.
He tells an initially disbelieving Jules to give it a go, and when she does, she is, understandably of course, similarly blown away.
Adam and Jules take to their time travelling trips with gusto, but even though they inhabit the bodies of their past selves and can override the consciousness in them, they also realise that toying with the past, changing even a small thing, can cause all kinds of nasty repercussions.
So, they play it cool and just as observe … until they don’t and then all hell breaks loose in You & Me and You & Me and You & Me as an arms race of “It couldn’t hurt to change just this small thing” leads to temptations so great they send the present configuration of Adam and Jules’ life spinning out of all recognition.
(courtesy Curtis Brown)
The effect on the couple is energising at first as they furtively explore this new super power of theirs – they can hardly tell anyone can they? And if they did, who’s going to believe them? – but soon enough, the temptation to fiddle and change and amend becomes too much, exploited by long-held resentment and guilt that finally, possibly, can find some resolution.
As out-there therapy sessions go, You & Me and You & Me and You & Me is an absolutely inspired, brilliantly imaginative, funny and yet deeply moving doozy, proof that you maybe don’t want to launch into a journey of relational self discovery unless you are absolutely sure you’re ready to deal with all the fallout.
Adam and Jules think they have it all under control but as all the changes mount up and unforeseen consequence after unforeseen consequence threatens to separate from each other for good, they are faced with some precious huge decisions.
But also, massive questions and some confronting realities – do they really want what time travel can offer them or are they better sticking with what they have and trying to make it better?
To be honest, they aren’t sure how to make it all better and tweaking things here and there after pressing play seems like a nice easy shortcut to the kind of life they think they’ve always wanted.
‘I know, I’m so sorry. For lying … and for the debt, because I know how much that scares you [Adam],’ she [Jules] says. ‘It’s also why I think we need to listen to this letter and make these businesses work.’
She’s right. We have to.
We will.
But as You & Me and You & Me and You & Me races through relationship quandaries and friendships on the brink and careers in need of a lift and kids who aren’t happy for reason their parents just can’t help explain, Adam and Jules have to confront the very real possibility that instead of finding their way back to each other and making things better that they may have just lost each other forever.
Or have they?
That, my friends, is something that must be left to the reading of this wholly original and marvellously clever novel which takes an audaciously imaginative idea and makes it feel real and human and relatably moving.
You & Me and You & Me and You & Me is a gem of a novel, full of some happily nostalgic moments that come tinged with as much pain and regret as they soon the warm glow of reanimated memories but also big questions about what we would do if we could go back and change things and whether we even should.
At the heart of a big epic blockbuster-y story is the intimate connection between Adam and Jules who may have lost their way, both as individuals and a couple, but who still love each other and who, at their heart of hearts, want to find their way back to each other.
But that’s easier said than done as You & Me and You & Me and You & Me makes movingly and humourously clear, and while the multiversal setting promises all kinds of tempting possibilities, there’s really only one outcome that this loved-up, if lost, couple want and in the end, it will take something very ordinary but pivotally important for them to make their way back to each other if they can just survive the mixtape repercussions first.