Choice

by Neel Mukherjee

320 pages, Paperback

Published April 23, 2025

About the author

Neel Mukherjee was born in Calcutta. His first novel, A Life Apart , won the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award for best fiction, among other honors, and his second novel, The Lives of Others , was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Encore Prize. He lives in London.

Reviews

[Martin Boyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essentially, three long short stories/short novella, linked by a similar theme of a breakdown of relationships through failure to take account of the interests and concerns of the other. (Well that’s a very short highlight of one particular theme: sorry, Neel Mukherjee!)

The three stories are as different as chalk and cheese. Different relationships, different feelings of being let down, different “resolutions,” but all leaving undetailed outcomes: how will those let down cope? A good ending to the stories: lots of things to think about.

Of the three, the last was, for me, the most compelling, perhaps because it is set in an environment less familiar to me? It also has a higher emphasis on cheating and its consequences.

Choice, and yes, choice is a fundamental element in the stories, I found to be patchy. Worth reading, but not compelling.