Julia lives in London with her family; her husband Hugh and their 14-year-old son Connor.  They have a nice life; she is a photographer, Hugh is a successful doctor, and Connor is doing well, at least until they get the news that Julia’s sister Kate has been killed.  She lived in Paris, and it turns out that she was Connor’s biological mother, but she gave him to Julia and Hugh because she couldn’t cope.  Julia goes to Paris to find out more about what happened; she is helped by her sister’s friend Anna. It turns out Kate had been going online and chatting with men, probably meeting them for sex.  Julia thinks she might be able to solve the murder by finding out more about the men Kate was chatting to.  She starts online chatting to some men and gets more drawn into the world of internet intimacy between strangers.  Julia has a troubled past with a drug addicted old boyfriend and her own addiction to alcohol, and so those around her are wary of the danger she might go off the rails again. Of course, Julia does get into trouble. She tries to manage the chaos she is creating, and sometimes it seems like she can manage, but she is repeatedly pulled back into more danger and risky behavior. She believes she is getting closer and closer to solving the puzzle of Kate’s murder, but the question is whether she really is, and at what cost.

With a title like Second Life, you would expect Watson’s novel to be mainly about an online world, but that is only one thread in the story. It is more about Julia’s whole web of lies and self-deception that she weaves to hide the truth from her husband and son. Ultimately, the plot is silly and even annoying, but Watson does have a talent for making you want to read the next chapter, so that you are drawn into the story and the need to find out what happens. It is not a book that works hard to create realistic and complex characters, and plausibility ceases to be an important constraint on the plot from early on.  But as a fable about how our reliance on secret identities, both in the virtual world and in the real word, can lead to division and catastrophe, Second Life is satisfyingly dramatic and judgmental.

© 2015 Christian Perring

Christian Perring, Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York