“It was real. A TV show that could literally alter the fabric of reality to change one’s life.” This is the premise of Peng Shepherd’s novel All This and More. When the titular game show is first broadcast, the world seems to stop in its tracks and pay attention. “No wonder everyone, everywhere was obsessed with the show,” Shepherd writes. “No wonder it was all anyone could talk about. No wonder [people] would gladly stand in line until they fainted or even died, just for the chance to be a contestant.”
Over 10 episodes, one lucky individual is placed inside a “quantum bubble” and given the opportunity to make different choices in their past in order to change their present and future. The contestant then follows the new path to see where it leads and can repeat this process multiple times, fine-tuning and working out the bugs, until the final episode. The Bubble, as it’s called, is “one hundred percent safe, comfortable, and separate from the actual world. … A completely controlled environment. At the finale, your new life will slot right into the world, with minimal interruption. You might have slightly different hair than before, or have attended another school, but that’s all. … No rips in spacetime, no collapse of dimensions.”
The show is a resounding success, breaking all ratings records and leaving the audience desperate for the next installment. Although the second season begins filming, it is, without explanation, never broadcast. The novel opens at the beginning of season three with a new contestant: the mild-mannered, self-doubting Marsh (short for “Marshmallow”), who is due for a makeover. A paralegal and divorced single mother, Marsh regrets giving up her dream of becoming a lawyer. She’s saddened by the end of her marriage to ex-husband Dylan and afraid she has blown her one remaining chance at happiness with an old high school boyfriend, Ren.
As Marsh’s premier episode comes to a close, she is faced with her first choice: repair her relationship with Ren or reverse her decision to drop out of law school after her daughter is born. For readers, this is where things get complicated. Shepherd invites them to make Marsh’s decision for her by turning to a particular page, depending on the choice — revealing that All This and More is essentially a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book for adults. It’s a clever idea that yields both payoffs and pitfalls.
As Marsh cycles through career choices as exotic as a wildlife photographer in Iceland, an award-winning telenovela star in Mexico City, and the head of her law firm’s new Hong Kong division, it’s fun to observe the outcomes, some of which are more outlandish than others.
At first, Marsh struggles to adapt to each new environment and set of circumstances, but soon she becomes accustomed to the abrupt changes and begins to relish the job of improving her life — perhaps even a bit too much: “Why settle for good, when she can have more? When she can have perfect?” Yet as she begins to notice some odd patterns repeating in each version of her life, she is forced to admit that the showrunners have not been completely honest with her, and she suddenly fears the show’s effects on those she loves.
Dylan points out another troubling aspect of Marsh’s new life goals: “No matter how good, it doesn’t matter, because it isn’t real.” All This and More is a thought-provoking experiment that will keep readers entertained and guessing all the way through — and maybe even asking themselves, as Ren asks Marsh: “What would you really rather have? … Something that’s true? Or something that makes you truly happy?”
Tina Chambers has worked as a technical editor at an engineering firm and as an editorial assistant at Peachtree Publishers, where she worked on books by Erskine Caldwell, Will Campbell, and Ferrol Sams, to name a few. She lives in Chattanooga.
Tagged: 2024 Southern Festival of Books, Book Reviews, Fiction
