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Come with Me
A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year, A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, A New York Post Best Book of the Week
Recommended by Vogue, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Skimm, The BBC, Southern Living, Pure Wow, Hey Alma, Esquire, EW, Refinery 29, Bust, and Read It or Weep
“Mind-blowingly brilliant…. Provocative, profound and yes, a little unsettling, Come With Me is about how technology breaks apart and then reconfigures a family, and though it has hints of sci-fi, it’s so beautifully grounded in reality that it seems to breathe. Although it takes place over just three days, what’s so fascinating is that so many lives, and many possibilities, are lived through it. Truly, it’s a novel like its own multiverse.” — San Francisco Chronicle
From Helen Schulman, the acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller This Beautiful Life, comes another "gripping, potent, and blisteringly well-written story of family, dilemma, and consequence" (Elizabeth Gilbert)—a mind-bending novel set in Silicon Valley that challenges our modern constructs of attachment and love, purpose and fate.
"What do you want to know?"
Amy Reed works part-time as a PR person for a tech start-up, run by her college roommate’s nineteen-year-old son, in Palo Alto, California. Donny is a baby genius, a junior at Stanford in his spare time. His play for fortune is an algorithm that may allow people access to their "multiverses"—all the planes on which their alternative life choices can be played out simultaneously—to see how the decisions they’ve made have shaped their lives.
Donny wants Amy to be his guinea pig. And even as she questions Donny’s theories and motives, Amy finds herself unable to resist the lure of the road(s) not taken. Who would she be if she had made different choices, loved different people? Where would she be now?
Amy’s husband, Dan—an unemployed, perhaps unemployable, print journalist—accepts a dare of his own, accompanying a seductive, award-winning photographer named Maryam on a trip to Fukushima, the Japanese city devastated by tsunami and meltdown. Collaborating with Maryam, Dan feels a renewed sense of excitement and possibility he hasn’t felt with his wife in a long time. But when crisis hits at home, the extent of Dan’s betrayal is exposed and, as Amy contemplates alternative lives, the couple must confront whether the distances between them in the here and now are irreconcilable.
Taking place over three non-consecutive but vitally important days for Amy, Dan, and their three sons, Come with Me is searing, entertaining, and unexpected—a dark comedy that is ultimately both a deeply romantic love story and a vivid tapestry of modern life.
Recommended by Vogue, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Skimm, The BBC, Southern Living, Pure Wow, Hey Alma, Esquire, EW, Refinery 29, Bust, and Read It or Weep
“Mind-blowingly brilliant…. Provocative, profound and yes, a little unsettling, Come With Me is about how technology breaks apart and then reconfigures a family, and though it has hints of sci-fi, it’s so beautifully grounded in reality that it seems to breathe. Although it takes place over just three days, what’s so fascinating is that so many lives, and many possibilities, are lived through it. Truly, it’s a novel like its own multiverse.” — San Francisco Chronicle
From Helen Schulman, the acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller This Beautiful Life, comes another "gripping, potent, and blisteringly well-written story of family, dilemma, and consequence" (Elizabeth Gilbert)—a mind-bending novel set in Silicon Valley that challenges our modern constructs of attachment and love, purpose and fate.
"What do you want to know?"
Amy Reed works part-time as a PR person for a tech start-up, run by her college roommate’s nineteen-year-old son, in Palo Alto, California. Donny is a baby genius, a junior at Stanford in his spare time. His play for fortune is an algorithm that may allow people access to their "multiverses"—all the planes on which their alternative life choices can be played out simultaneously—to see how the decisions they’ve made have shaped their lives.
Donny wants Amy to be his guinea pig. And even as she questions Donny’s theories and motives, Amy finds herself unable to resist the lure of the road(s) not taken. Who would she be if she had made different choices, loved different people? Where would she be now?
Amy’s husband, Dan—an unemployed, perhaps unemployable, print journalist—accepts a dare of his own, accompanying a seductive, award-winning photographer named Maryam on a trip to Fukushima, the Japanese city devastated by tsunami and meltdown. Collaborating with Maryam, Dan feels a renewed sense of excitement and possibility he hasn’t felt with his wife in a long time. But when crisis hits at home, the extent of Dan’s betrayal is exposed and, as Amy contemplates alternative lives, the couple must confront whether the distances between them in the here and now are irreconcilable.
Taking place over three non-consecutive but vitally important days for Amy, Dan, and their three sons, Come with Me is searing, entertaining, and unexpected—a dark comedy that is ultimately both a deeply romantic love story and a vivid tapestry of modern life.
312 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 27, 2018
480 people are currently reading
4492 people want to read
About the author
Helen Schulman
18 books123 followersHELEN SCHULMAN is the New York Times best-selling author of six novels, including Come with Me and This Beautiful Life. Schulman has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Sundance, Aspen Words, and Columbia University. She lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 309 reviews
November 19, 2018
This book was entirely not what I expected it to be. Based on the synopsis I expected more in the way of multiverses and the experiences Amy would have as a guinea pig to Donny in his experiment. This has been a subject that has always fascinated me. How many different lives could you be living - what if you had made different decisions... what would your life be like now? While this book did touch on that, I felt it was not the focus at all during my read, which was disappointing.
There are a lot of characters to keep track of in this book and they're all interspersed with each other in one form or another. I kept getting confused as to who belonged to whom and who was whose mother, etc. At times the story line changed from one character to another with no exact change over to let you know we were now looking through someone else's eyes.
Unfortunately I never connected to any of the characters. I especially wasn't interested in Dan's story line and wanted to drop kick him into next week. I'm not sure exactly what it was about him that just really got under my skin but he just did. Then that ending for him. UGH.
It's interesting that this is classified under sci-fi when it was such a minimal part of the book. I would put this more under domestic drama and it certainly doesn't fly in the dark comedy or deeply romantic love story that the synopsis leads you to believe in the last paragraph. Maybe it was due to all this misleading that led me to not particularly care for this book. Maybe it was the disconnection I felt to every character. Or maybe it just wasn't a good fit for this reader. No matter which way, unfortunately this book just didn't jive with me.
Thank you to Harper Books for this copy.
There are a lot of characters to keep track of in this book and they're all interspersed with each other in one form or another. I kept getting confused as to who belonged to whom and who was whose mother, etc. At times the story line changed from one character to another with no exact change over to let you know we were now looking through someone else's eyes.
Unfortunately I never connected to any of the characters. I especially wasn't interested in Dan's story line and wanted to drop kick him into next week. I'm not sure exactly what it was about him that just really got under my skin but he just did. Then that ending for him. UGH.
It's interesting that this is classified under sci-fi when it was such a minimal part of the book. I would put this more under domestic drama and it certainly doesn't fly in the dark comedy or deeply romantic love story that the synopsis leads you to believe in the last paragraph. Maybe it was due to all this misleading that led me to not particularly care for this book. Maybe it was the disconnection I felt to every character. Or maybe it just wasn't a good fit for this reader. No matter which way, unfortunately this book just didn't jive with me.
Thank you to Harper Books for this copy.
August 18, 2022
Throughout reading this book I questioned my enjoyment and wondered if I should continue reading. I did however finish and felt that it was two star novel.
There seemed to be a lot of characters, too many for each individuals story and to be told and mean something.
I felt the teen phone sex was weird and uncomfortable to read and did not add anything to the story.
The part involving Yoshi’s story was very familiar to me that I felt deja vu reading it. Did anybody else feel this way?
For me the ending was not satisfactory but I was glad that the book was finished
There seemed to be a lot of characters, too many for each individuals story and to be told and mean something.
I felt the teen phone sex was weird and uncomfortable to read and did not add anything to the story.
The part involving Yoshi’s story was very familiar to me that I felt deja vu reading it. Did anybody else feel this way?
For me the ending was not satisfactory but I was glad that the book was finished
November 27, 2018
At first I was unsure what the balance in this book would be between domestic drama and surreal/science-fiction trappings. It turns out that it is 95% drama and 5% sci-fi, so if you don't read a lot of sci-fi you have nothing to worry about. And like the best sci-fi, that part of the plot is really just a chance to consider our characters in more depth. And while the startup-Silicon-Valley setting also plays an important role in the story, it's not the focus either. This should have all been just fine with me, but while I was four-stars for this book for much of the first half, it ended up falling down to three.
The family at the center of the book is well-drawn, and the fact that the plot didn't really take off for a while didn't bother me at all. I enjoyed spending time with them. I enjoyed Amy's take on the world, I enjoyed being in her head. The last third of the book involves several crises culminating together, which is a very real thing, but also meant that most of what's been happening at the book gets sidelined while one particular thing gets worked out. The point of view also changes often, with many characters taking center stage only once, meaning that many of their stories feel unfinished.
Ultimately I just wanted this to be more than it is, more than just the same story of a marriage we've seen many times before. I wanted the different points of view, the idea of the multiverse invention, the whole package to go up a level and take me somewhere. I knew I was in a book by a skilled writer, but it felt more like a hodgepodge than a cohesive novel.
I also have to note that this book is another in a trend I've noticed in the past couple of years. It contains a trans character, that character is treated like a person, the character is allowed to be worth loving and worth desiring, but the way the character is written about (especially with respect to the gender they were assigned at birth) is problematic. I am 99% sure the author knows this, that it is the character whose point of view we are in who is ignorant on trans issues. But so much of the world remains ignorant on trans issues, and while this book may mean those audiences see trans people as more valid there are also things they may take away that are callous and insensitive, things you should never say (or think!) with a trans person. I do not know how to solve this dilemma, since of course there will be characters who are ignorant on these issues, but it's a problem nonetheless and I would caution readers who are sensitive on this topic to at least go in with proper expectations.
The family at the center of the book is well-drawn, and the fact that the plot didn't really take off for a while didn't bother me at all. I enjoyed spending time with them. I enjoyed Amy's take on the world, I enjoyed being in her head. The last third of the book involves several crises culminating together, which is a very real thing, but also meant that most of what's been happening at the book gets sidelined while one particular thing gets worked out. The point of view also changes often, with many characters taking center stage only once, meaning that many of their stories feel unfinished.
Ultimately I just wanted this to be more than it is, more than just the same story of a marriage we've seen many times before. I wanted the different points of view, the idea of the multiverse invention, the whole package to go up a level and take me somewhere. I knew I was in a book by a skilled writer, but it felt more like a hodgepodge than a cohesive novel.
I also have to note that this book is another in a trend I've noticed in the past couple of years. It contains a trans character, that character is treated like a person, the character is allowed to be worth loving and worth desiring, but the way the character is written about (especially with respect to the gender they were assigned at birth) is problematic. I am 99% sure the author knows this, that it is the character whose point of view we are in who is ignorant on trans issues. But so much of the world remains ignorant on trans issues, and while this book may mean those audiences see trans people as more valid there are also things they may take away that are callous and insensitive, things you should never say (or think!) with a trans person. I do not know how to solve this dilemma, since of course there will be characters who are ignorant on these issues, but it's a problem nonetheless and I would caution readers who are sensitive on this topic to at least go in with proper expectations.
December 15, 2018
It was a cowardly move, he knew, but he was a coward.
As has already been established here on Goodreads, I was a big fan of Schulman's novel P.S. but was underwhelmed by the more recent This Beautiful Life. Initially, to my dismay, Come with Me seemed to have a lot in common with the latter book: Privileged white straight middle-aged married couple; wife in a constant state of feeling put-upon, husband completely clueless in the emotional intelligence department, teenage son depressingly pervy and self-centered, younger sibling(s) in need of protection from the well-meaning but oblivious adults around them. Both novels also contain more viewpoints than seems strictly necessary for such short (200-300 pp.) books. I was so disappointed that I nearly DNF'd this.
Then Schulman threw a curveball and suddenly I was riveted. Obviously I won't tell you what it is, and it might have been kind of a cheap trick in another writer's hands, but in this case it made me realize what a good writer Schulman really is. Somehow she had set the whole thing up so that by the time the shocking event happened, I was invested without even knowing it. An odd compliment, I know, but I cannot deny that after that I didn't want to do anything but read Come with Me, and it ended up being a completely satisfying reading experience.
The book is bafflingly flawed. In addition to all those viewpoints, it tries to do too much—major world events and issues are incorporated; the lives and concerns of middle-aged folks, both married and divorced, are dealt with in ways that seem to be trying to say something bigger; the culture of Silicon Valley/Palo Alto and really, the entire internet itself, not to mention the weird complicated topic of multiverses, are all up for discussion. But the sci-fi element the book description promises... isn't quite there, and the people are pretty much all terrible. It seems like the novel should barely hang together, but for some reason, for me it did.
So, yes, Come with Me is ambitious, and it also manages to be vivid and nimble and thought-provoking and engaging. It defied my expectations over and over again, and when it comes to novels I can't think of much I admire more than that.
As has already been established here on Goodreads, I was a big fan of Schulman's novel P.S. but was underwhelmed by the more recent This Beautiful Life. Initially, to my dismay, Come with Me seemed to have a lot in common with the latter book: Privileged white straight middle-aged married couple; wife in a constant state of feeling put-upon, husband completely clueless in the emotional intelligence department, teenage son depressingly pervy and self-centered, younger sibling(s) in need of protection from the well-meaning but oblivious adults around them. Both novels also contain more viewpoints than seems strictly necessary for such short (200-300 pp.) books. I was so disappointed that I nearly DNF'd this.
Then Schulman threw a curveball and suddenly I was riveted. Obviously I won't tell you what it is, and it might have been kind of a cheap trick in another writer's hands, but in this case it made me realize what a good writer Schulman really is. Somehow she had set the whole thing up so that by the time the shocking event happened, I was invested without even knowing it. An odd compliment, I know, but I cannot deny that after that I didn't want to do anything but read Come with Me, and it ended up being a completely satisfying reading experience.
The book is bafflingly flawed. In addition to all those viewpoints, it tries to do too much—major world events and issues are incorporated; the lives and concerns of middle-aged folks, both married and divorced, are dealt with in ways that seem to be trying to say something bigger; the culture of Silicon Valley/Palo Alto and really, the entire internet itself, not to mention the weird complicated topic of multiverses, are all up for discussion. But the sci-fi element the book description promises... isn't quite there, and the people are pretty much all terrible. It seems like the novel should barely hang together, but for some reason, for me it did.
So, yes, Come with Me is ambitious, and it also manages to be vivid and nimble and thought-provoking and engaging. It defied my expectations over and over again, and when it comes to novels I can't think of much I admire more than that.
December 30, 2018
I’d prefer not to end a strong reading week on a negative note, but have you ever read a book that feels like a case of false advertising? As in, if you had paid for it you would have demanded a full refund? That’s how I feel about Come With Me. Here’s the Goodreads synopsis:
Amy Reed works part-time as a PR person for a tech start-up, run by her college roommate’s nineteen-year-old son, in Palo Alto, California. Donny is a baby genius, a junior at Stanford in his spare time. His play for fortune is an algorithm that may allow people access to their “multiverses”—all the planes on which their alternative life choices can be played out simultaneously—to see how the decisions they’ve made have shaped their lives.
Donny wants Amy to be his guinea pig. And even as she questions Donny’s theories and motives, Amy finds herself unable to resist the lure of the road(s) not taken. Who would she be if she had made different choices, loved different people? Where would she be now?
Interesting, right? Except there’s a subplot about Amy’s unemployed journalist husband and his decision to take off for Japan to interview the most radioactive human on the planet—which is just a cover to be alone with a beautiful transgender woman he thinks he’s in love with. The husband’s plot plays out in tedious, unimaginative detail while the entire premise of an app that allows you to explore the lives you didn’t live? That’s explored in two brief chapters where the developer, who reads like a stereotypical, techie, man-boy, psychologically tortures Amy with an app that doesn’t work properly.
I kept going with this book despite characters who were so off-the-charts in their self-indulgent, precious uniqueness as to be violently annoying (a teenager so in love with his girlfriend that they are on Skype 24 hours a day—he brings her to school on his phone and they set a place for her at the dinner table). Up until the midpoint, I thought there would be redemption—that something discovered from the app would bring profound meaning to Amy’s life. Instead, a painful and tragic incident appears out of nowhere—as if Schulman thinks it will redeem the book—and turns the last quarter of the novel into a theater of the absurd. I finished Come With Me as a hate read, which is unfortunate because Helen Schulman’s last novel, This Beautiful Life, was impactful and thought provoking.
Amy Reed works part-time as a PR person for a tech start-up, run by her college roommate’s nineteen-year-old son, in Palo Alto, California. Donny is a baby genius, a junior at Stanford in his spare time. His play for fortune is an algorithm that may allow people access to their “multiverses”—all the planes on which their alternative life choices can be played out simultaneously—to see how the decisions they’ve made have shaped their lives.
Donny wants Amy to be his guinea pig. And even as she questions Donny’s theories and motives, Amy finds herself unable to resist the lure of the road(s) not taken. Who would she be if she had made different choices, loved different people? Where would she be now?
Interesting, right? Except there’s a subplot about Amy’s unemployed journalist husband and his decision to take off for Japan to interview the most radioactive human on the planet—which is just a cover to be alone with a beautiful transgender woman he thinks he’s in love with. The husband’s plot plays out in tedious, unimaginative detail while the entire premise of an app that allows you to explore the lives you didn’t live? That’s explored in two brief chapters where the developer, who reads like a stereotypical, techie, man-boy, psychologically tortures Amy with an app that doesn’t work properly.
I kept going with this book despite characters who were so off-the-charts in their self-indulgent, precious uniqueness as to be violently annoying (a teenager so in love with his girlfriend that they are on Skype 24 hours a day—he brings her to school on his phone and they set a place for her at the dinner table). Up until the midpoint, I thought there would be redemption—that something discovered from the app would bring profound meaning to Amy’s life. Instead, a painful and tragic incident appears out of nowhere—as if Schulman thinks it will redeem the book—and turns the last quarter of the novel into a theater of the absurd. I finished Come With Me as a hate read, which is unfortunate because Helen Schulman’s last novel, This Beautiful Life, was impactful and thought provoking.
February 11, 2019
A very very interesting book - it was a bit tough to get into but once I did, oh my - gives me lots to think about for me and my sons and future generations
November 25, 2018
The synopsis of this book, described as exploring parallel lives in multiple universes, sounded so exciting but the reality was much less. I had to interrupt my reading for a few days and was shocked to realize that I had not retained any details about the story. The characters and plot just did not engage me. The sci fi aspect could just as easily be described as mildly hallucinatory experiences with pot in a sensory deprivation chamber. But, why bother? The tale is about an unhappy marriage and the wistfulness of a middle-age wife/ mother/ woman and her choices in life. But even at that level, the tale is lacking. I received my copy from the publisher through edelweiss.
November 24, 2018
This book tested my patience.
On the one hand, I didn't enter into it with any expectations. Unlike some, I wasn't really sure how much the multiverse aspect would play into the story so I wasn't disappointed when it took a backseat to the marital discord of Amy and Dan. However, there was also a lot here that felt like too much information for the sake of filling pages.
I didn't need a play-by-play of all the ways in which a marriage can fall to the wayside. Nor was I interested in the far too codependent relationship of two horny teenagers with far too much time on their hands...literally.
There were plenty of interesting characters within the book but they were often relegated to the periphery in favor of a random encounter or some dinnertime shenanigan. While both Kevin (Jack's best friend and Amy's "second son") and Marilyn (the trans woman) eventually play a major role in the arc of the story, neither was fleshed out enough for you to feel connected to them as characters. If anything, they felt like collateral in a story that feels more about a man suffering through a midlife crises as his marriage falls apart.
I wanted to love this but it often felt like I was reading a rough draft of a story where the author was still letting it "come"to her: it often seemed to veer off the path completely before returning back to whatever its point was in the first place.
On the one hand, I didn't enter into it with any expectations. Unlike some, I wasn't really sure how much the multiverse aspect would play into the story so I wasn't disappointed when it took a backseat to the marital discord of Amy and Dan. However, there was also a lot here that felt like too much information for the sake of filling pages.
I didn't need a play-by-play of all the ways in which a marriage can fall to the wayside. Nor was I interested in the far too codependent relationship of two horny teenagers with far too much time on their hands...literally.
There were plenty of interesting characters within the book but they were often relegated to the periphery in favor of a random encounter or some dinnertime shenanigan. While both Kevin (Jack's best friend and Amy's "second son") and Marilyn (the trans woman) eventually play a major role in the arc of the story, neither was fleshed out enough for you to feel connected to them as characters. If anything, they felt like collateral in a story that feels more about a man suffering through a midlife crises as his marriage falls apart.
I wanted to love this but it often felt like I was reading a rough draft of a story where the author was still letting it "come"to her: it often seemed to veer off the path completely before returning back to whatever its point was in the first place.
January 5, 2019
Like a lot of other reviews, I want to emphasize that while this sounds science-fictiony, it's primarily based in real life. There are some aspects involving technology that doesn't exist, but the multiverse part of the book is much more philosophical "what if I did this instead" instead of actually trying to reverse your life.
What made me realize that I really hated this book was how it centers itself around white people being shitty and not changing. There's a lot that starts to build, but everything hits when and that kind of sealed it for me. I feel like this is hard to talk about without revealing who the spoiler is about, so I'm just going to say it all:
I felt like this was also emphasized in a supporting character that is a trans woman of color: the dad starts an affair with her and the narrative continually repeats his surprise at being attracted to her and pondering her life pre-transition. It really fetishizes trans women when it won't let her just be a character and keeps saying she "was male" and analyzing her body in terms of being able to "pass."
The rest of the book is just white people doing horrible things: abusive workplace environments, playground bullying, cheating in multiple forms and pretty much anything else you can think of. It jumps around to a bunch of perspectives to the point that you have to remind yourself who is who - it would have been much less confusing if they had only stuck with the main family, but even that was still a lot.
I wish this book actually had something to say about humanity, especially in its touted multiverses, but all I'm coming away with is that people suck. And the cycle starts again, which isn't something I really believe in.
What made me realize that I really hated this book was how it centers itself around white people being shitty and not changing. There's a lot that starts to build, but everything hits when and that kind of sealed it for me. I feel like this is hard to talk about without revealing who the spoiler is about, so I'm just going to say it all:
I felt like this was also emphasized in a supporting character that is a trans woman of color: the dad starts an affair with her and the narrative continually repeats his surprise at being attracted to her and pondering her life pre-transition. It really fetishizes trans women when it won't let her just be a character and keeps saying she "was male" and analyzing her body in terms of being able to "pass."
The rest of the book is just white people doing horrible things: abusive workplace environments, playground bullying, cheating in multiple forms and pretty much anything else you can think of. It jumps around to a bunch of perspectives to the point that you have to remind yourself who is who - it would have been much less confusing if they had only stuck with the main family, but even that was still a lot.
I wish this book actually had something to say about humanity, especially in its touted multiverses, but all I'm coming away with is that people suck. And the cycle starts again, which isn't something I really believe in.
April 18, 2019
I guess I'm not the ideal reader of this utterly mediocre novel. I live a couple of streets over from where its protagonists ostensibly live, so I notice whenever Schulman gets her geography wrong. My kids attend the schools it features, so I understand how they don't really function as described. I work in the two industries she writes about (journalism and high tech), which brings home the author's tenuous grip on the history and current realities of both. And lastly, I know the people who live here and that the last thing they'd want anyone to make of our community's painful experience with a teen suicide cluster would be a facile hook for a piece of fiction. But that's what we get. Worse, a high-achieving, stressed out Asian kid is killed off as a mechanism for a middle-aged white couple to face their banal relationship demons. Cliche is piled upon cliche, hurt upon hurt, without acknowledgement that this is also racially freighted territory.
As an appendix make clear, Schulman's is a book researched mostly through Google and informed by Wikipedia above all, plus an occasional visit with relations who live near by. It's spectacularly superficial and notices all the wrong things. Just a tiny example: No kid in Palo Alto would be surprised or grossed out by an Asian family serving Asian food at a funeral. Every child here eats dim sum, knows how to use chopsticks, etc. etc.. And if they don't, that's the news, not that the host family was somehow gauche in wanting to serve it.
Few of Come To Me's readers will live in the area it describes, of course (although I only picked it up because it's about my town). So what if we forget that the streets, schools, and communities it name checks are real and see the novel's "Palo Alto" as emblematic of the wider, hyper-connected modern world? After all, the opaque and frankly unbelievable virtual reality technology developed by a major character in the story (himself a walking brilliant-but-immature-slob-nerd cliche) offers its users a glimpse into alternate universes and all the ways in which their lives might have gone differently. Sadly, just as its protagonists fail to really grapple with the ramifications of what they're inventing, the narrative makes disappointingly little of the futuristic technology - or the counter narratives - that it conjures. The personal and societal events and inventions it posits - both real and imagined - are momentous (there's a whole subplot about the Fukushima earthquake that is woefully underdeveloped in the context of the broader narrative). But its characters' reactions to them are devoid of new or surprising insight. Perhaps that's a deliberate comment on what little we make of our lives. But it tells us nothing we didn't already know.
There's much about Palo Alto that is both typical and strange. I can imagine a novel in which the particular ways in which we go about our lives in this part of the world are both illustrative and revelatory about how people live now. But you won't find that in the version of our town that Schulman has chosen to describe.
As an appendix make clear, Schulman's is a book researched mostly through Google and informed by Wikipedia above all, plus an occasional visit with relations who live near by. It's spectacularly superficial and notices all the wrong things. Just a tiny example: No kid in Palo Alto would be surprised or grossed out by an Asian family serving Asian food at a funeral. Every child here eats dim sum, knows how to use chopsticks, etc. etc.. And if they don't, that's the news, not that the host family was somehow gauche in wanting to serve it.
Few of Come To Me's readers will live in the area it describes, of course (although I only picked it up because it's about my town). So what if we forget that the streets, schools, and communities it name checks are real and see the novel's "Palo Alto" as emblematic of the wider, hyper-connected modern world? After all, the opaque and frankly unbelievable virtual reality technology developed by a major character in the story (himself a walking brilliant-but-immature-slob-nerd cliche) offers its users a glimpse into alternate universes and all the ways in which their lives might have gone differently. Sadly, just as its protagonists fail to really grapple with the ramifications of what they're inventing, the narrative makes disappointingly little of the futuristic technology - or the counter narratives - that it conjures. The personal and societal events and inventions it posits - both real and imagined - are momentous (there's a whole subplot about the Fukushima earthquake that is woefully underdeveloped in the context of the broader narrative). But its characters' reactions to them are devoid of new or surprising insight. Perhaps that's a deliberate comment on what little we make of our lives. But it tells us nothing we didn't already know.
There's much about Palo Alto that is both typical and strange. I can imagine a novel in which the particular ways in which we go about our lives in this part of the world are both illustrative and revelatory about how people live now. But you won't find that in the version of our town that Schulman has chosen to describe.
February 28, 2019
As a work of science fiction, this stinks. There's one potentially interesting (though devastatingly implausible and painfully underdeveloped) piece of future technology, and it makes exactly two appearances of about a page each in this 303-page book.
However! As a work of literary fiction, this also stinks. I'm over the midlife crisis, doing-pretty-okay family dissolving narrative. Oh, this one is edgy because the woman the cheating husband falls in love with is trans? Get the fuck out of here. Find a new story.
All that said, as a combination of literature and sci-fi, this is the worst of all. There's nothing worse than a piece of genre fiction that's unwilling to admit that it's genre, and friends, this is that piece.
However! As a work of literary fiction, this also stinks. I'm over the midlife crisis, doing-pretty-okay family dissolving narrative. Oh, this one is edgy because the woman the cheating husband falls in love with is trans? Get the fuck out of here. Find a new story.
All that said, as a combination of literature and sci-fi, this is the worst of all. There's nothing worse than a piece of genre fiction that's unwilling to admit that it's genre, and friends, this is that piece.
March 26, 2019
In the not too distant future perhaps, people will be able to take that " . . . road not taken" and experience first hand what their lives would have been like had they bought shares in Apple stock or married their first love. And that's one of the central themes of this book. A young tech start-up entrepreneur is in the process of inventing multiverses or the programs that make viewing/experiencing multiverses possible. And the first person he gives access to the program is a 40-something employee who is his mom's best friend. As far as a literary tool, she's a good candidate for two reasons: she's old enough to have had a life in which roads were taken and she's not young enough to be jaded by tech advancements.
A baby-boomer like me loves stories like this even though, or because, it sometimes feels like the young in the book are speaking a foreign language and yet it's somehow comprehendible so it's satisfying. I find myself thinking, " Ah, yes! This is what youth is about now!"
Yet, this book gets 5 stars not only for the main storyline but because it has so many interesting threads: there's marital infidelity; raising twin boys who have starkly different personalities; teen suicide; abortion or miscarriage; rekindling old high school romance; cyber-sex; and most interesting of all, a news story about Japan after the tsunami involving a farmer who returned to his farm in the middle of the most irradiated place in Japan to take care of his animals.
The only thing I didn't care for in this book is the title. You'd think with all that going on, she could have thought of a better title. It's a minor gripe in an otherwise great book.
A baby-boomer like me loves stories like this even though, or because, it sometimes feels like the young in the book are speaking a foreign language and yet it's somehow comprehendible so it's satisfying. I find myself thinking, " Ah, yes! This is what youth is about now!"
Yet, this book gets 5 stars not only for the main storyline but because it has so many interesting threads: there's marital infidelity; raising twin boys who have starkly different personalities; teen suicide; abortion or miscarriage; rekindling old high school romance; cyber-sex; and most interesting of all, a news story about Japan after the tsunami involving a farmer who returned to his farm in the middle of the most irradiated place in Japan to take care of his animals.
The only thing I didn't care for in this book is the title. You'd think with all that going on, she could have thought of a better title. It's a minor gripe in an otherwise great book.
Read
April 14, 2019There's a point toward the end where one of the characters is reading Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. Sadly, this only made think how much more effectively Pullman addresses many of the same ideas that Come With Me takes on: questions about free will, the role of choice and the role of chance, the possibility of different worlds existing alongside the one we know.
Why did one book take my emotions hostage, make the hair stand up on the back of my neck, make me stay up too late, while another one just made me say, Hmmm, that's interesting? Every reader is different; we are not all going to like the same things. But I did not feel moved by the plight of these characters. I did not feel personally involved and swept away as I did when Lyra and Will battled for their lives in an alternative world.
And it's not because one is "magical" and the other is "realistic"; Kate Atkinson, in Life After Life, explores similar themes in a way that is not magical at all but also grabbed me emotionally in a way that Come With Me Never managed.
This book interested me enough to put other books aside and read it in a matter of days but it left me feeling arid and unmoved. The character I was most concerned about was the dog, even though he was not given much of a personality. It seemed like the sort of book where something awful would have to happen to the dog. Fortunately I was wrong about that.
Why did one book take my emotions hostage, make the hair stand up on the back of my neck, make me stay up too late, while another one just made me say, Hmmm, that's interesting? Every reader is different; we are not all going to like the same things. But I did not feel moved by the plight of these characters. I did not feel personally involved and swept away as I did when Lyra and Will battled for their lives in an alternative world.
And it's not because one is "magical" and the other is "realistic"; Kate Atkinson, in Life After Life, explores similar themes in a way that is not magical at all but also grabbed me emotionally in a way that Come With Me Never managed.
This book interested me enough to put other books aside and read it in a matter of days but it left me feeling arid and unmoved. The character I was most concerned about was the dog, even though he was not given much of a personality. It seemed like the sort of book where something awful would have to happen to the dog. Fortunately I was wrong about that.
February 27, 2019
This book is a mess, and barely touches on this Goodreads synopsis:
Amy Reed works part-time as a PR person for a tech start-up, run by her college roommate’s nineteen-year-old son, in Palo Alto, California. Donny is a baby genius, a junior at Stanford in his spare time. His play for fortune is an algorithm that may allow people access to their "multiverses"—all the planes on which their alternative life choices can be played out simultaneously—to see how the decisions they’ve made have shaped their lives.
Donny wants Amy to be his guinea pig. And even as she questions Donny’s theories and motives, Amy finds herself unable to resist the lure of the road(s) not taken. Who would she be if she had made different choices, loved different people? Where would she be now?
Sounds like an intriguing science fiction novel right? Well don't get your hopes up. Yes, part of this involves Amy as she explores the multiverse of what could have been as Donny's test subject. But that is really a minor part. This is mostly an exploration of family, with the family members asking themselves those what if questions when a major tragedy occurs. However, the multiple characters with an unsettling jump from point of view to point of view, make this really a scattered mess. You are in Amy's head, then that of her unemployed husband as he follows a trans woman researching the after effects of the Fukushima earthquake in Japan (really, yes could be interesting but seems totally random), then in the heads of Amy's sons, and even more randomly the head of the mother of Amy's oldest son's girlfriend (got that?). They could all be interesting stories on their own, but they are thrown together with little connection, leaving you feeling jarred and annoyed as the book jumps from place to person. Throughout the author tries to enliven her theme of the multiverse, but in the end you are left feeling there were several good books trying to come out with the loser being the reader.
Amy Reed works part-time as a PR person for a tech start-up, run by her college roommate’s nineteen-year-old son, in Palo Alto, California. Donny is a baby genius, a junior at Stanford in his spare time. His play for fortune is an algorithm that may allow people access to their "multiverses"—all the planes on which their alternative life choices can be played out simultaneously—to see how the decisions they’ve made have shaped their lives.
Donny wants Amy to be his guinea pig. And even as she questions Donny’s theories and motives, Amy finds herself unable to resist the lure of the road(s) not taken. Who would she be if she had made different choices, loved different people? Where would she be now?
Sounds like an intriguing science fiction novel right? Well don't get your hopes up. Yes, part of this involves Amy as she explores the multiverse of what could have been as Donny's test subject. But that is really a minor part. This is mostly an exploration of family, with the family members asking themselves those what if questions when a major tragedy occurs. However, the multiple characters with an unsettling jump from point of view to point of view, make this really a scattered mess. You are in Amy's head, then that of her unemployed husband as he follows a trans woman researching the after effects of the Fukushima earthquake in Japan (really, yes could be interesting but seems totally random), then in the heads of Amy's sons, and even more randomly the head of the mother of Amy's oldest son's girlfriend (got that?). They could all be interesting stories on their own, but they are thrown together with little connection, leaving you feeling jarred and annoyed as the book jumps from place to person. Throughout the author tries to enliven her theme of the multiverse, but in the end you are left feeling there were several good books trying to come out with the loser being the reader.
January 20, 2019
Please tell me this author was high when this book was written? It’s classified under sci-fi but that is a microscopic portion of an entirely disjointed contemporary ‘like’ tale. The ‘multiverse’ angle intrigued me but the only multiverse going on here was the weirdly cobbled together insane ideas. Take 3 or 4 great storyline’s, decide you can’t decide which one to turn into a novel and go ‘readers will get it’ let’s just put them all in one book! No! Oh, and for good measure let it all happen over the course of three days (including a return trip to Japan from the US)!
Amy could’ve been a strong, powerful female character but comes across as damaged goods for all the wrong reasons. Dan, the annoying unemployed useless husband & father is despicable in thoughts and deeds. Add in an annoying child-minded Silicon Valley genius, a tragic suicide, a post-op transgender fling, the multiverse technology, some bat-shit crazy offspring and voila...a load of crazy-ass reading!
Amy could’ve been a strong, powerful female character but comes across as damaged goods for all the wrong reasons. Dan, the annoying unemployed useless husband & father is despicable in thoughts and deeds. Add in an annoying child-minded Silicon Valley genius, a tragic suicide, a post-op transgender fling, the multiverse technology, some bat-shit crazy offspring and voila...a load of crazy-ass reading!
December 2, 2018
Novelists engaged in state of being
and or conscious conflagration,
realize they are oxygenated cliches and attempt and fail,
to make the reader shed a single, beautiful tear.
#poem
Chris Roberts, God Descendant
and or conscious conflagration,
realize they are oxygenated cliches and attempt and fail,
to make the reader shed a single, beautiful tear.
#poem
Chris Roberts, God Descendant
January 17, 2019
The jacket oversold the multiverses; this is really just a story of a family in crisis. It's not bad, but it's not particularly special, either.
January 24, 2019
ugh. couldn't even finish.
September 9, 2019
Probably a 3.5, but the main character was a runner, so I bumped it up instead of down. Interesting perspectives on technology on existence. It kind d of wrapped up too quickly a d cleanly.
January 10, 2019
Interesting book. On the one hand, it's extremely readable, such that I read it almost in one sitting. The details of Palo Alto life are also strikingly accurate. Almost too much so; it nearly reads like a laundry list of details, but as a longtime Silicon Valley resident, they all feel true. Among the many specific details that only SV residents can understand that the book gets right are Printers Inc. coffee, the chips and salsa at Palo Alto Sol, Philz Coffee, the California Ave Farmers Market, Strauss Dairy, the Waldorf school, Hotel 22, the late night high school kids at Happy Donuts, Mem Chu, and the Nut House. It gets Palo Alto life totally right.
On the other hand, for all its readability the book doesn't come together. Even though events occur, to the very end it feels more like a setup for plot to happen than a story in itself. Too many disparate elements (including a truly random Texas subplot) that don't feel like they resolve cohesively. So in the end I both enjoyed the read and felt frustrated.
On the other hand, for all its readability the book doesn't come together. Even though events occur, to the very end it feels more like a setup for plot to happen than a story in itself. Too many disparate elements (including a truly random Texas subplot) that don't feel like they resolve cohesively. So in the end I both enjoyed the read and felt frustrated.
August 30, 2019
"Attachment? Your definition, please?"
"Need, entanglement, intimacy, reliance, what stands between us and the abyss, the way an infant requires a parent, the way caring for a child makes one feel whole, the way partners share responsibilities, one taking over when the other one can't. Habit. Habituation. One's view of oneself. Who we are in the world."
Often while in the midst of rambling conversations with my husband we'll end up spiraling down some internet rabbit hole seeking random information. You know what I'm talking about, Reddit or IMDB or an old article on a gossipy website that leads you to ever more searches and clicks. "What did people do in these types of situations before they had every answer right at their fingertips?" I'll ask. "They talked, they debated," he answers.
My husband and I were born 7 years apart (to the day, weird, but true) and we belong to two different generations: he Generation X with all of their plaid coated angst and me a technology steeped millennial. 7 years is not a huge age difference time-wise, but there's a big difference in our coming of age experiences. That difference boils down to one thing: technology. Cell phones, social media, news, media consumption, on-demand everything. I barely remember a time where technology wasn't completely interwoven in my life and all of my relationships. He does. It's an interesting dichotomy sometimes and talking about the interplay of technology during our formative years is usually when our age gap is most starkly felt.
Technology has changed everything. Today we live with smartphones in hand and give ourselves over fully to technology, living a life very different from those who came before, without any idea of the real cost. Is having constant access to everything and everyone at all times really all it's cracked up to be? It sure is handy, but at what cost? Usually the cost of our selves. Our relationships, identity, attachments, a feeling of belonging and understanding of how we fit into the world. The internet is always at the ready to inform these things, it's almost as if we're more ourselves online at this point. We're boundlessly using technology, but actually technology is more often using us. This is what Helen Schulman is exploring in Come With Me.
The given synopsis leaves me expecting some sci-fi multiverse story a la Dark Matter and if that's what you're hoping for you'll be sorely disappointed. It is much more a literary exploration of technology, relationships, and the modern family with a touch of sci-fi speculation regarding where technology might one day take us, plus a good helping of satire. Schulman's writing goes down so smoothly and drama abounds, but there are deeper themes within to consider.
This is the first I've read of Helen Schulman and I look forward to reading more.
January 4, 2019
“Mind-blowingly brilliant…. Provocative, profound and yes, a little unsettling.... I don't know who said that about this book, but, after listening to two and a half hours of the audio book, I can tell you the Mind-blowingly brilliant part hasn't happened yet and it's too uninteresting and dull to go on.
March 4, 2019
This isn't science fiction and isn't really about the multiverse. It's a mildly interesting story about a Palo Alto family going through midlife crises. I liked it okay.
March 25, 2022
Abandoned. It’s just not for me.
May 11, 2019
To be honest , I didn’t finish this book; because I hated it. Hence, the one star. I thought it sounded like such a cool plot. There wasn’t a single character unliked though. In fact , I pretty much hated everyone in the book , and I didn’t find the language or way it was written to be particularly engaging. Huge disappointment.
August 3, 2021
I almost stopped reading this a few times. Each character was more annoying than the next. No point, the storyline was odd, the characters stupid.
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February 16, 2019I didn't want to read this book because I've never liked anything else she's written, but I read it anyway. The only character I cared about was the dog. When the dog returns at the end, I was so happy and relieved that my takeaway was "oh yes, I liked this book" but I really didn't. I thought the only interesting thing was the premise (the world of "what if's"), which has been done so much better and effectively and compelling by Kate Atkinson and others, which reviewers are treating as though Helen Schulman invented it rather than having merely dulled it down. The only intriguing aspect of the book was the virtual relationship between Jack, the oldest son, and his girlfriend Lily, and we never learn enough about that. Is it good for them to be together 24/7 via FaceTime? Harmful? The author doesn't seem to care enough about the question to even scratch at the surface for an answer. The main character, Amy, feels reborn every time she goes out for a run, as do I. Enough of this book: I'm going for a run.
November 26, 2018
Come With Me, Helen Schulman’s sixth novel, is a feat of both craft and storytelling. On the surface it is about a suburban family: the parents, Amy and Dan, are dealing with middle-age ennui, midlife unemployment, and marital resentments, their adolescent son Jack is navigating long distance love and hometown friendships, and Theo and Miles are much younger, behaviorally-challenged twins. Each of these main players has their own narrative along with a quirky, interesting supporting cast. Altogether they comprise six to eight stories (depending on your perspective), with just as many themes—reality, regret and reconciliation, consciousness and conscience, free will versus destiny, to name a few—that seamlessly intertwine into one that should engross and enchant every type of reader—from those who love a page-turner to literature lovers to philosophical thinkers.
Set in Silicon Valley, Donny, a Mark Zuckerberg wannabe, has a start-up that’s creating goggles to access multiverses, essentially parallel universes where our life plays out differently. He uses Amy to test the goggles, and through them she virtually experiences alternative realities wrought by alternative choices. Dan, on the other hand, upends his here and now to forge a new life that he experiences in real time. Schulman juxtaposes these scenarios to delve into whether the answers to "what if" impact the present and how they change us. If this sounds sci-fi-y, it isn’t, though it is by turns cool and terrifying, adjectives which also apply to the day-to-day circumstances these exquisitely flawed yet wholly sympathetic characters are plunked into, evoking in each of them our least and most flattering qualities, motives, and impulses.
Come With Me resonates as an exploration of personal responsibility and fidelity, as an examination of the ethical quandaries imposed by technology’s rapidly changing frontiers, and as a pleasurable, easy to read escape into someone else’s dysfunctional family. One thing is certain: in this and every multiverse Schulman has gifted us with an(other) enduring, relevant work of fiction!
Set in Silicon Valley, Donny, a Mark Zuckerberg wannabe, has a start-up that’s creating goggles to access multiverses, essentially parallel universes where our life plays out differently. He uses Amy to test the goggles, and through them she virtually experiences alternative realities wrought by alternative choices. Dan, on the other hand, upends his here and now to forge a new life that he experiences in real time. Schulman juxtaposes these scenarios to delve into whether the answers to "what if" impact the present and how they change us. If this sounds sci-fi-y, it isn’t, though it is by turns cool and terrifying, adjectives which also apply to the day-to-day circumstances these exquisitely flawed yet wholly sympathetic characters are plunked into, evoking in each of them our least and most flattering qualities, motives, and impulses.
Come With Me resonates as an exploration of personal responsibility and fidelity, as an examination of the ethical quandaries imposed by technology’s rapidly changing frontiers, and as a pleasurable, easy to read escape into someone else’s dysfunctional family. One thing is certain: in this and every multiverse Schulman has gifted us with an(other) enduring, relevant work of fiction!
March 17, 2019
I literally rolled my eyes when I finished this book because it was such a waste of my time. And I feel kind of bad because so many people loved the book. To me it was:blah blah blah blah...shut up already. Just babbling.
A briefly mentioned character turns into the major turning point of the book. A second grader speaks like a college student, and another second grader brings a $2,000.00 computer to school and is responsible for its care. A man finds out that a beloved family friend has died, and chooses that moment to confess infidelity to his wife. So much doesn't make sense. There are also so many characters I could not keep them strait, and even if I could, who cares? Most of them are very unlikable. Especially Dan. I hated him.
There are some cool, clever things in the book. When Cindy realizes why Phil had sex with her it is very sad, but it is also really interesting. All the multiverses that Amy visits the first time are really interesting (I thought, "Finally, I'll like the book."), and the concept is interesting.
Not cool- the bizarre way that Maryam is treated- it's clear Dan thinks she is a man even though he says she is a woman (freaking out a little because touching her breast feels natural, but he's never been attracted to men, but oh wait, she is a woman- is this "am I really gay," part of his attraction to her?). Did she really charge everything to Dan? If Dan and Amy can't pay for a $2000 computer, then how weren't the hotel and airfare charges declined? Makes no sense. Hated the whole trip to Japan and Fukushima stuff. Maybe I just didn't get it.
I am sorry I read the book. So much talking.
A briefly mentioned character turns into the major turning point of the book. A second grader speaks like a college student, and another second grader brings a $2,000.00 computer to school and is responsible for its care. A man finds out that a beloved family friend has died, and chooses that moment to confess infidelity to his wife. So much doesn't make sense. There are also so many characters I could not keep them strait, and even if I could, who cares? Most of them are very unlikable. Especially Dan. I hated him.
There are some cool, clever things in the book. When Cindy realizes why Phil had sex with her it is very sad, but it is also really interesting. All the multiverses that Amy visits the first time are really interesting (I thought, "Finally, I'll like the book."), and the concept is interesting.
Not cool- the bizarre way that Maryam is treated- it's clear Dan thinks she is a man even though he says she is a woman (freaking out a little because touching her breast feels natural, but he's never been attracted to men, but oh wait, she is a woman- is this "am I really gay," part of his attraction to her?). Did she really charge everything to Dan? If Dan and Amy can't pay for a $2000 computer, then how weren't the hotel and airfare charges declined? Makes no sense. Hated the whole trip to Japan and Fukushima stuff. Maybe I just didn't get it.
I am sorry I read the book. So much talking.
May 16, 2020
If you like family-ensemble drama, you might very well like this book, although it doesn't compare well with the masters of domestic drama such as Barbara Kingsolver. Because of the blurb on the back of the book as well as a short review I read, however, I was expecting something quite different, and I think hyping this as a book about exploring alternate timelines or universes does the author a great disservice because it tempts the wrong audience to read the book. I kept waiting for this novel to get more interesting, more speculative, more cerebral or less depressing. Instead it felt very fragmented, right up until the last section when the author tries to bring all the characters and subplots together. I almost thought she was going to pull that off--the last 25% of the book was the part I liked best--but at the end the protagonist (and by then you've finally figured out which character that is), lets us down. The likable characters don't seem very realistic to me, or at least their choices don't. The unlikable characters are just annoying. Aside from some musings by the main character at the end, the alternate timeline experiments are just window dressing, although they do have the advantage of making us realize that we might not like to know about our alternate-universe lives at all.
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