Behind The Book

Why I wrote The Choice

I’ve always been fascinated by hit-and-runs. Not from a crime perspective, but from a human one. What makes somebody flee the scene? Is it panic? Self-preservation? Or does that split-second decision reveal who they really are?

That question stayed with me for years. I’d first explored a version of it in my second novel, The Past’s Prisoner, but I still felt there was something left to say.

Around the same time, three very different pieces of art kept circling the same idea. The ending of Succession Season 1 fascinated me because of Kendall Roy’s split-second decision to cover up a hit-and-run. It was the moment an audience realised that someone they’d been rooting for was capable of doing something morally indefensible.

John Berryman’s Dream Song 29 captured something similar from a different angle: the idea that guilt never really disappears. Its haunting final line, “Nobody is ever missing,” stayed with me long after I’d first read it and echoed themes I’d already begun exploring in The Past’s Prisoner.

Then there was Idles’ song “MTT 420 RR”. More than anything, it was the atmosphere that struck me: a winter night, a driver under the influence, and the visceral panic of a car accident unfolding in real time.

Those influences weren’t blueprints for The Choice, but together they helped shape its emotional core. They all ask, in different ways, what happens after one irreversible decision, and whether it’s ever possible to live with what you’ve done.

Together, those influences pushed me towards a story about a man who gives in to his worst temptation, only to be confronted with the life he could have lived instead. Playing with the idea took four years, challenging myself structurally by writing two parallel narratives that continually overlapped and influenced one another.

The question behind the novel

Every book I write begins with a question.

For The Choice, it was what kind of person are you on the worst day of your life?

Most of us believe we’re good people. But if you found yourself in a situation where you could do the right thing, or convince yourself you could get away with doing the wrong thing, which would you really choose? The moral grey fascinated me far more than the mechanics of the story itself.

Why Henry?

Henry isn’t a detective or a criminal. He’s an ordinary man whose profession unexpectedly gives him the opportunity to hide what he’s done. Sometimes life-changing decisions aren’t made because someone is inherently good or evil. They’re made because means, motive and opportunity collide at exactly the wrong moment. 

Henry isn’t extraordinary. That’s exactly why he interested me. I wanted to explore what an ordinary person would do when faced with an extraordinary moral choice.

What I deliberately avoided

Although The Choice contains an impossible premise, I never wanted it to become a novel about explaining impossible things. Across my books I’m much more interested in character than mechanics. The split realities exist to explore Henry’s decisions, not to become a scientific puzzle for the reader to solve.

I also wanted to avoid easy answers. There was never going to be an “it was all a dream” ending, a hidden third reality or a twist that explained everything away. The emotional truth of Henry’s choices always mattered more to me than providing every answer.

Themes

At its heart, The Choice explores guilt, self-deception and identity. The lies we tell other people are often easier to spot than the lies we tell ourselves. Henry spends much of the novel trying to convince himself he’s still a good person. Whether he succeeds is for the reader to decide.

Who might enjoy this book?

If you enjoy morally complex thrillers that ask “what if?” rather than simply “whodunnit?”, The Choice may be for you. Readers who enjoy Sliding Doors, Marvel’s What If…? or the high-concept fiction of Blake Crouch will hopefully find something familiar here.

After you’ve finished…

More than anything, I hope The Choice leaves you asking one uncomfortable question:

If you knew you could get away with it, what’s the worst thing you would do?