Amy Reed works part-time as a PR person for a tech start-up, run by her college roommate’s nineteen-year-old son, in Palo Alto, California. Donny wants Amy to be his guinea pig. And even as she questions Donny’s theories and motives, Amy finds herself unable to resist the lure of the road(s) not taken. Who would she be if she had made different choices, loved different people? Where would she be now?
... strikingly original, compelling and beautifully written ... In Come With Me, Schulman’s central preoccupations continue to be the endless complexities of marriage, midlife and family and the ever-pressing need for people, even in Silicon Valley, to connect. Her writing in this new novel has the humor and wit, the careful eye for social detail and astute character development, that made her previous novel, 2011’s This Beautiful Life, a best seller ... Even [though the novel discusses multiverse theory], Schulman weaves all this material — along with multiple points of view — into a tight, urgent narrative that builds in tension until, about a hundred pages in, I found it difficult to put the book down ... One of the many triumphs of Come With Me is that Helen Schulman makes [the ending] enough.
Helen Schulman’s Come With Me delves into the interplay of technology and relationships with edgy, upsetting and tragic results. And yet, the story is also warm, wise and witty ... While Maryam is an interesting character, her portions tend to drag and dominate. More time could be spent on Jack and Lily, for example, whose relationship defines the book in an important way, but who become something of a sad joke, especially once Lily 'attends' a funeral via Skype ... Come With Me respects the human right to feel more than one thing at one time: Sadness and amusement, love and hate, edginess and safety. It’s the kind of all-encompassing acceptance that makes the book feel both contemporary and classic.
... [a] smart, timely and highly entertaining novel ... Schulman deftly moves around, telling her story from various points of view. Sometimes she strays a little far afield — I wasn’t sure I cared about the dating travails of Jack’s girlfriend’s mother, as amusing as they were — but her observations, particularly about the ridiculousness of the Northern Californian start-up mentality, are always apt and sharp.
