The Man Who Turned Into Himself has a terrific cover and attracted me right away. Judging a book by it's cover? Sometimes it works and I was very happy to find a great mind-bending mystery inside. Written by David Ambrose, it's about a businessman named Rick Hamilton who has a premonition his wife Anne is in a car accident. When he arrives at the scene, he sees her pinned under the car dying. He manages to save their son Charlie from the wreck. And then, Anne is standing beside him, comforting him, as he was the one in the accident. He asks about their son but they have no son.
He is now another man with another life ~ Richard Hamilton, a real estate developer, still married to Anne, though without a child or a happy marriage. Rick's consciousness battles with Richard until they realize they have to work out what has happened together. Is it possible Rick can return to his previous life?
The Man is based on the "many worlds" theory of quantum physics, which posits the theory of parallel universes. Each decision you make splits off into two paths ~ The choice you made and the choice you declined, and a new universe (or timeline, or history) is created. Seeing through Richard's eyes, in this timeline John F Kennedy finished his term as president and his brother Robert followed him in office. Marilyn Monroe is still alive. He still had his best friend Harold, but in the second universe, Harold was having an affair with Anne. Rick learns to let Richard do all the talking so he wouldn't sound insane, and sends Richard to people he knew in his previous existence who could help decipher the story, and possibly help Rick return to his own past/future.
Neils Bohr pioneered this theory in the twenties and although it is mind bending, there is scientific evidence to back up the theories which are described in the book. A simple one is shining a flashlight at a wall. The light that shines through a hole in the wall is emitted as a particle. If you shine it through two holes in the walls, instead of emitting particles, they turn into waves. This particle/wave duality is an example of a quantum transition, a splitting of the universe where the differences between the two are in one a particle is seen and in another a wave is seen. This is happening over and over, creating countless universes. I love books like these, both fiction and non-fiction as it's such a wild idea, seemingly impossible. There is universe where I didn't read this book, one where I don't have a blog, another where I did both but never updated my blog, so many forks in the road.
The book gets wilder as it moves deeper into mental analysis. They discover through a therapist that Richard can be hypnotized, but not Rick, allowing Rick to tell his story. Then they hypnotize Rick to regress back into his past to a time before the car accident, possibly preventing it and/or jumping back into his old life. He does with the help of Richard, but it's no longer the same life, the timeline had changed. Although he continues to live in that present, he finds he can dream back into Richard's life, or several other Rick/Richard universes where each decision (taken or not taken) is being played out.
A real "thinker's mystery" that travels in ways I can only touch on ~ if this review makes The Man sound complex, I have only shared the tip of the story! Fascinating and involving...
Cause and effect. Time Travel. I always love these stories and this was a twister.
Highly recommended!
2008 / Paperback / 197 pages
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