AS IF

A grieving man is confronted with a mysterious counterpart.

Aubrey Lewis has seen better days. The former actor used to star in a popular British television series, People Live, People Die, People Live As If They Were Already Dead, but now lives in a London sublet, still grieving the death of his wife from cancer and subsisting on his dwindling savings. He gets the offer of a lifeline from Fran Howe, a director he’s worked with before, who wants him to audition for a role in a literary adaptation; he declines the chance. Enter Lindsey Korine, a former schoolmate of Lewis’ who happens to bear a striking resemblance to him and who shows up at his door one day with no explanation. Lewis, who grows tired of Korine’s company, leaves his flat, leaving Korine alone; Korine decides to audition for the role himself: “I might have registered Lewis’s vulnerability and decided to exploit it,” Korine admits. “Or else, I registered his vulnerability and decided that this person, this walking SOS, needed my help." Meanwhile, Lewis moves in with Korine’s estranged wife and child—the two seem to know he’s not Korine, but choose to keep the charade going. Lewis and Korine begin to encounter each other around London but keep living each other’s lives. This is a novel that can be read in one of two ways: Either Lewis and Korine are indeed different people, doppelgängers, or they’re one person undergoing an existential crisis. Waidner never tips their hand, which is a brilliant decision that throws the reader off balance as they are drawn into Lewis and/or Korine’s unsettling world. The novel is not as gleefully absurd as Waidner’s previous two, but their restraint turns out to be welcome. This is a stunning book with much to say about how grief can alter our life (or lives).

A towering achievement from one of contemporary literature’s most original minds.