“As If” by Isabel Waidner: I Want Your Life (BOOK REVIEW)

I Want Your Life

Hey, Alex! What have you been reading lately?

The first thing that pulled me into the world of As If was the cover: a forlorn-looking cafeteria that evokes familiarity, loneliness and the idea of being worn down. It’s a building you’ve passed a hundred times on the street without noticing or stepping a foot inside.

Living in London for the past three years, this novel struck a nerve. It captures that persistent sense of being lost in a city bursting with excess and diversity, where it’s strangely easy to feel ordinary, replaceable, and invisible. As If asks a quiet but unsettling question: how do you remain yourself and find happiness in a place that constantly wants you to be someone greater?

Poignant, reflective, and bittersweet, As If is a masterclass in escapism and the desire to stand out by erasing ourselves.

Tell me more. What is the book about?

Aubrey Lewis was an actor a few too many decades ago. Now, he’s a widower. Lindsay Korine has always dreamt of being famous, but life has gifted him with a family that can’t stand him.

Despite their polar histories, the two men are eerily similar in terms of appearance and psychology. Both feel unfulfilled, restless, and desperate to experience something better than what they already have. So they make the absurd but inevitable decision to trade places. Each steps into the “main role” of a reality that isn’t theirs, hoping this might be their second chance; an opportunity to do things right in a world where their dreams can finally come true.

What are some strong and weak points of the book?

Waidner has the remarkable ability to fully immerse the reader into their story. I missed my tube stop twice while reading this – not because the plot demands attention in the traditional sense, but because the narrative pulled me into its rhythm and refused to let go.

What struck me most is how precisely As If captures the experience of living in a vast, crowded city. Individual lives feel insignificant here. You are swallowed up, spat back out, and expected to carry on unperturbed. The melancholy is quiet but persistent, woven through moments of farce and dark humour that stop the novel from ever becoming heavy-handed or overwrought.

Lewis and Korine believe they want each other’s lives. Korine chases his childhood dream of becoming an actor. Lewis steps into the structure of family life after his wife’s passing. But what I found far more compelling is that neither man truly wants to change their circumstances. What they crave is the chance to perform – to step outside themselves temporarily, to put on someone else’s clothes, and be seen from a fresh perspective.

Once their new roles are normalised, or worse, feel natural, the illusion collapses. The wish to impersonate loses its appeal. Only then do they start to reflect on the lives they left behind, and to wish to go back.

With that in mind, the narrative is non-linear and some might find Lewis’ and Korine’s side stories and endless monologues impossible to keep up with. Eventually, you will stop resisting. As If is designed as a recollection of memories unfolding in real time. It is fast-paced, gripping, and occasionally overwhelming simply because there is no pause to breathe.

A few too many adverbs might be the book’s only downside, but I am sure that is something easily overlookable.

Any final thoughts? Should I read it too?

As If is a reflective meditation on modern life, regret, and the fragile hope that it is never quite too late to begin again.

It tells the story of two middle-aged, unaccomplished men who want to feel wanted and slowly come to understand that fulfilment doesn’t come from borrowed lives or external validation. Lewis and Korine spiral from paranoia to anger to sadness within the span of a paragraph, and it’s precisely this emotional volatility that makes them real. Always roaming, always searching for what has been within them all along.

This is a great book for anyone dulled by routine or haunted by the question of what could have been. A necessary read for those always wanting more that recognises the exhaustion that comes from constant greed. Read it at your own discomfort. Laugh, cry, throw it at a wall, and remind yourself that being human is exactly that – a combination of ups and downs and the realisation that we are all in it together.

Thank you so much!! Are there any similar books that you can recommend?

😂 Good Material by Dolly Alderton — an unaccomplished stand-up artist navigates loneliness and heartbreak, realising that adulthood isn’t turning out the way he planned.

👯‍♀️ Julie Chan Is Dead by Liann Zhang — an unhinged exploration of identity and impersonation, where a woman steps into her dead twin’s seemingly glamorous life and loses sight of herself.

📲 limaistyping…

rating: ☀️☀️☀️☀️
tropes: 🔄 life swap | ✌️ second chance | ⁉️ fame vs family | 🎭 performative identity | 💭 reflective narrative
read if you like: The Barbican, sitcoms with 20+ seasons, South London, rental families, greasy-spoons
look out for: 🤙 lots of L-named characters | 🎤 a smooth audition process | 💤 bedtime reading rituals | 🏝️ Mallorca plane tickets | 🗑️ a knife in a bin
this feels like you like dark humour but are jealous of everyone, yourself mainly.