A woman crosses multiple universes to find her mother in Bridge, a mind-bending, multiverse-tripping sci-fi thriller from Lauren Beukes (Afterland; The Shining Girls).
Bridge arrives at the home of Jo, her estranged mother, to tackle what her nonbinary best friend, Dom, calls "sadmin" tasks, namely cleaning out the belongings left behind now that Jo has died. The brain tumor that caused Jo to run away with Bridge when she was seven years old and drag her into a world of hallucinations and dreams was defeated back then, but it resurfaced and took Jo's life. Bridge and Dom discover that someone has broken into Jo's house; it looks as if a burglar was looking for something specific. Then they find hidden in the refrigerator "a lumpen yarny cocoon, thawing out in the gory remains of the ratatouille... like a spindle wrapped in rotting elastic bands." Bridge remembers this disturbing bundle: the dreamworm, a substance that allows its consumer, under the right conditions, to switch bodies with another self in a parallel universe. Suddenly the dreams of her childhood seem all too real. Bridge begins to wonder: If the dreamworm isn't imaginary, is it possible that Jo might still be alive in some other world? She embarks on a quest to relearn the secrets of the mysterious substance, much to Dom's dismay, switching places with many versions of herself.
Beukes's space-time-continuum distortion of a novel is like that rare blockbuster film that delivers on both special effects and thought-provoking moral dilemmas. Bridge is high-concept entertainment at its finest, with a heavy dose of wistfulness keeping the fantastical elements grounded. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads