I’m a sucker for a Sliding Doors kind of story – Lionel Shriver’s The Post Birthday World, Kristin Cashore Jane, Unlimited … – I just enjoy seeing how the author envisions people having completely different relationships based on one decision. Sometimes, there is a sense of poignancy and sadness as a reader as we know things the characters never will, we see how people that could have been best friends in one life are barely passing strangers, seeing a loss the characters never even realize exists…
The Names starts as Cora and her nine year old daughter, Maia, go to register her new born son’s name on his birth certificate. Her husband wants the child to be named Gordon after him to follow family tradition. But Cora wonders about saddling this baby to these expectations and having another generation of men like her husband. She is fond of Julian, meaning sky father, and the possibility it represents for him to transcend beyond the past. Maia suggests Bear because it sounds like someone soft, cuddly and kind, brave and string.
The novel spans 35 years, checking in every seven years on the alternate lives of Bear, Julian and Gordon. How different could this one boy’s life be based on his name? And the question is more than simply how much do our names influence our lives and who we are – tied into all three of these names is what the decision represents for his mother, how it influences how people interact with him, and his father’s reaction to the choice.
Cora is in an abusive marriage and her daughter at 9 is very much aware and already shaping herself based on what she sees. The name choices represent a moment of varying degrees of rebellion or compliance, a moment of considering and respecting her daughter’s opinion or showing her how to make herself small.
Like a stone thrown in the water, the names cause ripples across lives, impacting more people than simply Cora, Maia, and the boy. Characters like Cora’s mother Shilve, Cian and Lily make appearances across the different versions of Bear/Julian/Gordon’s lives but how large of a role they play varies vastly from life to life, either floating in and out or becoming huge parts depending on the timeline. Other characters only show up in one version of a life as major changes in trajectories mean there is no way paths would have crossed in these alternate timelines.
As with any story that shows how different choices could have played out, there is a sense of bittersweetness as the gains and wins of one version of life also mean lost opportunities. But as readers, we have the opportunity to see all the possibilities and enjoy characters that in a different world, we would have missed.
There isn’t a single choice that is all positive or negative – while there may have been a version of the man the infant became that I preferred, all of the choices come with losses. And while I may have preferred one version of the man, I also preferred his relationships with some characters in a completely different timeline.
While it handles some dark and serious subject matters, portraying domestic violence and spousal abuse, and how it impacts the generations beyond it, it’s also ultimately hopeful, and I really enjoyed it and my time with the different versions of the cast of characters.