Life's Lottery by Kim Newman

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If you grew up in the 1980s then you may well remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books that gave the reader the chance to create their own story ('If you choose to fight the dragon, go to page 73. If you choose to run as fast as possible in the other direction, go to page 89.') Life's Lottery takes the basic concept of those books, but rather than apply it to an adventurous story, makes you Keith Marion, a seemingly ordinary man and lets you live your entire life from birth through to death.

Newman takes what could be just a wacky concept and actually produces an interesting novel from it. Keith Marion begins as a blank slate and it's your choices that decide who he (and indeed you - the book is written in the second person) becomes and what sort of person he is. The central concept is that it is the choices we make who decide what we are and from your first real substantive choice between Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin, you decide what sort of life Keith Marion gets.

It's a book that can be read again and again, each time giving you a different story and showing you just where your choices can lead you. What seems like a simple decision can have repercussions far down the line, or lock you onto a path in your life that from which there's no escape, a wasted life ending in simply 'and so on...' until you get to go to 0. Life becomes almost random, and the metaphor of a lottery from which only a few choices (and not the ones you might think) can let you win.

Life really is what you make it, and if you do read this book I'll pass on one bit of advice from a review that convinced me to buy this book. If you get the chance to have a Doctor Who day, take it.

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