"How ought one to live?" This is the question that obsesses London-based publisher Ayush, driving him to question every act of consumption. He embarks on a radical experiment in his own life and the lives of those connected to him: his practical economist husband; their twins; and even the authors he edits and publishes. One of those authors, a mysterious M. N. Opie, writes a story about a young academic involved in a car accident that causes her life to veer in an unexpected direction. Another author, an economist, describes how the gift of a cow to an impoverished family on the West Bengal-Bangladesh border sets them on a startling path to tragedy.
Mukherjee is brilliant at tracing the ways a choice deferred becomes a fate sealed. But the book’s tripartite structure is even better at showing how we graze one another’s lives with our decisions, some of which may be catastrophic for our conscience but beneficial for our art ... A lesser writer would offer only pathos. Mukherjee is alive to all that — but also to the rich, cruel comedy of being saddled with an asset you can’t digest, a gift that costs you everything, a choice you can’t unmake.
Mukherjee sacrifices the readerly satisfaction that comes from dramatic payoffs; instead of providing pure narrative, he creates a dialectic ... Mukherjee pulls the reader into these problems with a seriousness and technical excellence that makes a lot of what is published today seem immature. Choice asks much of us readers. But, for all its pessimism, it trusts us to be up to it.
Can be read as a novel or as three stand-alone stories. The third part, though refreshingly different, proves the least involving. The first part, by far the strongest, is marred only by the scant insight it offers into publishing ... Otherwise, Mukherjee impresses. He captivates readers but also stimulates them by rigorously exploring race, agency, equality, the weight of our moral quandaries and the implications of our choices.
