Review of "Diverging Streams" by Earl L. Carlson

​Score: 92/100 (9.2 out of 10)

Diverging Streams by Earl L. Carlson is a strange, witty, melancholy blend of romantic fantasy, ghost story, small-town nostalgia, and speculative fiction, with the book itself openly framing the premise as “a journey through time and alternate realities.”

We have mixed yet mostly positive views of this book. Ultimately, despite it being unpolished and rough around the edges, we actually found it to be entertaining, engaging, thought-provoking, and even a bit encouraging and inspirational.

So, let's get the negative stuff out of the way first: the initial presentation. The cover page looks like the first slide of a PowerPoint presentation. It even has that generic, unmistakable WordArt font that PowerPoint presentations often use for titles.

It's disarming because it gives the reader the impression that the creator of the book is an amateur who doesn't quite know what they're doing.

Well, when you dig into the book, that all changes. This book is actually quite sophisticated. We'll get to that in a moment, but first... Another thing that bothered us about this book initially was how sexually explicit a key scene between the young protagonists was. This would not have been so troubling and disturbing if they were older (at the time the scene occurred), but we felt it was a bit much for a scene describing two underage individuals, lingering on Jennifer's legs in particular. There's not much tact in these descriptions, yet there's a lot of humor, absurdity, sass, and sarcasm that lighten things. We especially liked the line, "There is only so much a person can say about the aurora borealis. Once they have exhausted that, they require a measure of linguistic agility to divert the dialogue into new channels." This line is poetic and ironic given the rest of the book and what the aurora borealis represents in some cultures (a gateway to the afterlife). It also shows how self-aware and tongue-and-cheek the writing can be.

Also, going back to what we were saying about the central sex scene, there's a really weird surprise revelation near the end that we won't spoil, but we think that was meant to soften things more. And let's face it: those formative years are times when boys and girls love to explore that realm of their being.

Anyway, despite how this scene bothered us, it truly is key. It shows how naive, confused, excited, and vulnerable they both were, and it helps explain why this moment echoes so loudly across the rest of the book. There's an immense tragedy there that's presented in this really goofy light: the loss of innocence and a chance for these two to be together for the rest of their lives.

Carlson is not inserting that scene just to be provocative. He is trying to crystallize a formative emotional memory, one that becomes the beating heart of the novel’s later meditations on regret, longing, and second chances.

Oh, and by the way, did we mention this is pretty much a soft ghost story about the afterlife? Our protagonists are dead! Well, they die pretty early on. That was actually, genuinely a shocker and a surprise. We thought this book was going one way, then it pulled the rug out from under us and went down another path entirely—a better path. That seems fitting given the title and themes of the book.

We all have regrets and things we'd love to take back or do over again. Maybe it's the one who got away (which Jennifer Jessup is to Haskell Yngren). Maybe it's not spending enough time with our parents, grandparents, or children before they passed away (similar to the situation with Kitty Kat, her mom, and her grandfather, a war hero).

This book takes a very interesting perspective on the afterlife. So, basically when you die, you are pretty much given the powers of the TARDIS from Doctor Who. You can go anywhere at any time. You can pretty much do anything with little consequence because you can't die again. You can visit Ancient Rome or modern Paris. You can even visit loved ones without them knowing you're there.

We actually found this fascinating, and we were particularly happy with how the characters used this opportunity. It made sense to us.

For example, consider who Haskell is: he's a lonely, frustrated, somewhat defeated man whose life in the early 70s had not turned out the way he hoped. Early on, Carlson paints him as a failed artist, socially awkward, self-conscious, and still haunted by lost possibilities.

So, why wouldn't he want to reconnect with his childhood sweetheart, Jennifer? Why wouldn't he want to go to Paris in the middle of the Renaissance when art was at its peak? If you were someone who once lost faith in their artistic endeavors, why wouldn't you want to go to the period when art became the stuff of legend?

And what about the elderly war hero, a man shot down over Omaha Beach during World War II? Why wouldn't he want to watch over the granddaughter from whom he was separated in life? Why wouldn't he want to help her know the mother she never had the chance to truly know? We found that to genuinely be an emotional resonant part of the book. It helps that Kitty Kat seems like a really good, cute, and sweet kid.

And then there's the juxtaposition we're given between the bloody, violent, and tragic attack on Pearl Harbor compared to the pristine natural beauty of Hawaii, which Jennifer expresses interest in going back to. We found that to be really poetic and powerful, and it's so subtle too. Our founder is from Hawaii, so that spoke to him as well.

The book does start to meander and become very philosophical near the end (in which the author basically info-dumps all his ideas of multiple dimensions, timelines, and possibilities), but we didn't mind that too much.

This book really makes you think: what would you do if you could go anywhere? If you could go back? Maybe try to fix or change things? Would you not put $3000 on world #1 Carlos Alcaraz to defeat Medvedez in the Indian Wells semi-finals? Would you check and see if your widow is "cheating" on you? Would you visit Einstein in Bern in 1905, when he was still an obscure patent clerk quietly changing the world? Would you go back to Florence during the Renaissance and talk to Leonardo da Vinci? Would you see if the girl you left behind still loves and longs for you?

Check it out on Amazon!