Sandra Newman's stunning fourth novel, The Heavens, begins in New York in late 2000, where Hungarian-Turkish-Persian artist, Kate and Ben, a Bengali-Jewish PhD student, meet at a party and begin a relationship, which blossoms into love.
It's initially a world in which a woman, and climate change activist, President Chen, has been elected in the United States and peace treaties have been signed in the Middle East.
It was "the first year with no war at all, when you opened up the newspaper like opening a gift".
But problems arise when Kate's dreams take her to a slightly alternate Elizabethan England in 1593, where she is Shakespeare's "Dark Lady", Emilia Bassano Lanier, and mistress of a nobleman.
Newman's linguistic richness expertly renders Kate's American and Elizabethan worlds.
The Will Shakespeare is in this world a minor playwright who dies in 1593, as does Emilia.
But what if Kate's arrival means he lives and becomes "our" Shakespeare, and the current world changes as Kate fears?
![Distinctive voice in Sandra Newman's latest novel Distinctive voice in Sandra Newman's latest novel](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/9gmjQxX8MpSQh6J68NHMnY/d6f86da0-427c-418e-9ff7-514faee7ea1f.jpg/r0_0_1234_1984_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Emilia/Kate both have visions of a global disaster, "the broken planet venting its innards in smoke . . . A burnt dead world ".
Kate believes she is "the key to the salvation of the world", while Emilia/Kate wants to be "a candle in the night, a bright seed of heaven".
Are Kate's dreams real and, if so, are they changing reality? Does the individual become universal? One version of New York is only months away from 9/11.
Are Kate's dreams real and, if so, are they changing reality?
Is Kate mentally unstable or is the fabric of our universe collapsing?
Kate knows, "the dream was just what had happened to her.
"It was one of those things where the best you could do was to hide it from other people."
Ben increasingly worries about her mental state and their relationship drifts apart, as Kate is referred for psychiatric assessment.
Ultimately, uncertainty remains, as Kate says to Ben:
"I think we could be happy, but there isn't any way to save this world".
Newman has spoken, in an interview, of her desire "to create a world where we behave toward others as we would have them behave towards us".
There are nods to Ursula Le Guin's 1971 novel, The Lathe of Heaven, but Newman is decidedly her own voice.
In an almost existential conclusion, Newman reflects on the need, simply, to make the best of life as it is with all its faults, even if it means leaving many bittersweet questions unanswered.
- The Heavens, by Sandra Newman. Granta. $29.99.
- Colin Steele is a Canberra reviewer