Bridge, by Lauren Beukes

In infinite parallel universes, there’s a version of you who already has everything you’ve ever wanted. But 24-year-old drop-out Bridge is paralysed, by all the other lives she could have lived, the choices she could have made, and now, whoever she’s supposed to be in the wake of her mother’s premature death.

 

They always had a complicated relationship. Jo was the teenage runaway turned maverick neuroscientist who threw everything away chasing after an impossibility – a mysterious artefact – the dreamworm – that allows you to switch between realities. And now she’s dead and any chance of reconciliation with her is gone.

 

But is Jo really gone ... or only in this universe? When Bridge and her best friend Dom stumble on the dreamworm,which does indeed open the doors to other worlds, otherselves, she becomes convinced her mom is lost out there. But the dreamworm is more dangerous than she can imagine, and she’s not the only one hunting across time and space.

 

Page-turning and ambitious,  Bridge  is a dazzlingly inventive speculative thriller with an unforgettable cast of characters, and the work of a novelist at the height of her powers.