If

Product Description




If is an experimental novel of ideas.


 


You are the nameless protagonist, a young dreamer from northern California. At the end of each chapter, you must make a decision. These decisions shape your identity as the novel swerves toward twenty-two possible endings. While your choices take you to rural Guatemala, Manhattan, or Berlin, the novel continually changes its form. What are the limits of freedom, and how much of life is within your control?




Review


"This is the most ____ book I have ever read."
Ankur Shah, author of 
Sometimes We Walk Alone

 











"
If belongs to that particular subgenre of [interactive fiction] whose overt hook is the opportunity to reach radically different life outcomes from the same starting point: works like
Life's Lottery, 
Pretty Little Mistakes, and 
Alter Ego."
Emily Short, author of 
Blood and Laurels


 















"The novel describes itself as experimental, but you will simply remember it as 'choose your own adventure,' except with all the sex and violence left in."

Portland Book Review


 







From the Author


From an interview at 
SeattleWrote
:

               




Q: Why write a literary choose-your-own-path (or "choicefic," or "gamebook") novel?


 




A: Partly because it had never been done before. People have come close, but I wanted to write a piece of literature that's as serious and literary as my favorite novels, while still using this format associated with children's books. I've always been attracted to works of art that bring together the difficult and experimental with the simple and playful. Like the Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth, Andy Warhol, Laura Riding Jackson, Borges. There are all sorts of strange ways that punk and surrealism and the avant-garde intersect with children's literature and music. 
If tries to belong to that tradition.


 



The other reason for using the branching-path narrative was that I wanted to write a coming-of-age story that shows how contingent our lives are, but also how some parts of our identities are stubbornly resistant to change. 
If is basically about an American boy who grows up in a northern Californian coastal town. His parents raise him with all the American ideals of freedom and self-expression. He believes that he can become anyone he wants to be. The book is about some of the paths that are open to him, and some that aren't. It's about freedom and its limits.







From the Back Cover


What Do You Choose?

 

In this experimental novel, 
you
 are the star 

and must make a CHOICE

at the end of EACH CHAPTER--

 

Your choices will decide what happens next!

and what kind of book the book becomes:
 
A MYSTERY? A LOVE STORY?
A REALIST ACCOUNT OF VISITING A PRISON?
 

You Are Free To Choose!


All manner of desirable lives await!
 
Including:
Homeless life. Romance in Paris. Vision questing. Blue collar labor. High school drama sports. Raising a Christian family. Derangement of the senses. Presidential politics in Appalachia. Adventures of a ladies' man. Join a gang of hoodlums. Metaphysical mystery in the English countryside. Punks in an art school warehouse. Death in Thailand. Life as a wandering saint--
 
You are free to become all of these things!
 
--and in each case--
 
YOU WILL FAIL.
 

IN ADDITION

as an added benefit
of your journey

you are assured of receiving
 
NO WISDOM.




About the Author


Nicholas Bourbaki lives in Seattle and writes on philosophy, literature, and economics at 
Against the Logicians
.