‘Like Being Alive Twice’: Dharini Bhaskar’s new novel reflects on how love forces our hand

Recently, after a hearty lunch in a beautiful house, someone said to me that development is good. That is what matters. If someone is delivering it, what use is weighing the moral stakes of their politics? There have been other abundant dining tables, other lovely homes – always the same placation. Perhaps this indifference would have rankled the same at any time, or perhaps we came of age in a particularly poisoned moment.

In Like Being Alive Twice, the dance of everyday life takes place in a similarly development-pilled world, and the messy business of love becomes messier. A mountain town and a moment of tension: the future splits open into the probable and the possible. Facing our protagonist Poppy are two doors: a blue one through which she steps into life as it should be, and a yellow one which leads to an alternate, sort of inverted imagination of it – all spurred by a flash of desire.

Dharini Bhaskar debuted to much critical acclaim with These Our Bodies Possessed by Light. Borrowing its title from Richard Siken’s Scheherazade, the book teased the threads of love and womanhood into interesting knots. Like Being Alive Twice also walks in these footsteps, drawing its title from the poem The Defeated, where Linda Gregg memorably...

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