Five friends meet at their favorite college hangout 21 years later to compare notes and catch up. Although the Spanish Gardens hasn't changed, their lives certainly have and whether they are happy with their place in the world becomes the subject of the evening, not only in their conversation but also in their choices.

“Choose wisely.” Those are the words that send each person in this group of friends through the door to another life. At some point, they will remember everything and must choose which life they want to continue to live, leaving the other life behind forever. Will they choose to return to their current life or remain with their new life? Which is the wise choice?

These characters are richly drawn. I became totally enchanted with their individual stories. Possibilities for a second life, a different life, abound. Which one would they pick? I had to keep reading to find out.

All throughout their lives, their stories, their choices stood the mysterious Ariel, unobtrusively pushing them through the door.

In addition there lies the mystery of the night. Did the Mayans know something? Was this the end of the world? Would there be a tomorrow?

This is a wonderful reading experience, one that I highly recommend.

I received a copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Now that I've discovered this author, I'll be purchasing more of her books.
( )

Imagine you can go back and live an alternate life. You make different choices and have different experiences with potentially different people. Perhaps it means no kids, a different career choice, a different spouse or perhaps no spouse at all. Are you willing to make that choice? You only have a few seconds to decide, so what do you do? This is the dilemma that faces five friends on the eve of 12/21/2012 in 2012: Midnight at Spanish Gardens by Alma Alexander.

Olivia, John, Quincey, Ellen and Simon have no idea what's in store for them on this wintry December evening. They haven't really been in contact with one another since college and that's been over twenty years ago. It seems quite fortuitous that they agree to meet at an old college hangout, Spanish Gardens, on the evening that the world is supposed to come to an end. They are all greeted by an enigmatic gentleman, ostensibly the bartender, Ariel. Ariel doesn't really intrude in their evening but he does seem to provide them all with interesting yet profoundly insightful statements. And it the mysterious Ariel that provides all five with the ultimate decisions of go back in time, live an alternate life and stay in that alternate history or return and continue with the present history.

Simon is the last to enter the restaurant and the first to experience an alternate past. In this life he suffers through the premature death of both parents due to a car accident and is raised by his maternal grandmother. He becomes a respected university professor and restarts a world-renowned, university-founded literary magazine. He also becomes instrumental in the success of several students turned authors. His choice is to stay in this life without children or spouse or return to his life with a wife, children and fame as an author. Is his fame more important than his students? What choice will he make?

John was the proverbial wild child. Once he learned about his inauspicious origins and his father's behavior he no longer wants to be the good child that follows in his father's footsteps or so he thinks. In his alternate life he does become a doctor and eventually gives his life over to philanthropy by working with Doctors Without Borders. It is rather ironic because with the exception of working as a physician in one life, John's lives mirror one another. In one he is alone and travels the world as an organizer for aid and relief with UNESCO and in the other he is also alone and travels the world to give aid and relief as a doctor. Which life is preferred since they are so closely aligned?

Quincey and Ellen are both faced with truly life altering alternate pasts. Quincey must decide if marriage (even the one that didn't work out), children and being a single mom are more important that an unexpected but deeply rewarding love. Ellen is also faced with the choice of children vs. no children, but her choice is even more difficult as her alternate past is as a completely different person altogether. Olivia is the first person that we meet in this tale and her alternate life is the last presented. Her choices are just as difficult, but she seems to have a better grasp on what mistakes not to make in this lifeline. I won't mention the details of her alternate life or the choices that she has to make, but it is Olivia's story that ultimately ties the others together and provides clarity. All five friends are faced with impossible choices. Fortunately once they make a final choice their alternate life becomes nothing more than a blur of possibilities.

Everyone likes the idea of going back and changing things, possibly righting the wrong decisions or simply making a different decision. Ms. Alexander shows that this is not always as easy as we think. I have to say that I rather enjoyed this story. There were moments when I wasn't sure about the story simply because of long and rambling sentences, use of terms such as susurrus and serried (yes I had to look them up, see below), or seemingly disjointed conversations. But even with these issues I continued on and was pleasantly surprised by the intriguing stories. I became invested in learning more about the characters and wanted to see what choices they would make. In the end I was thoroughly and pleasantly surprised by just how much I liked 2012: Midnight In Spanish Gardens.

Susurrus: a soft murmuring or rustling sound; whisper.
Serried: pressed together or compacted, as soldiers in rows: serried troops. ( )

The characters in Midnight at Spanish Gardens are exquisitely drawn in this fascinating speculative tale of the end of the world, and the day after.

On the eve of the Mayan end of the world, Dec. 20, 2012, five college friends meet in Spanish Gardens, the restaurant where they had celebrated their graduation 20 years before. Over Irish coffees, they reminisce – and reveal long-held and disturbing secrets.

Each friend in turn is given an extraordinary choice by an enigmatic bartender named Ariel -- stick with the life you have, or leave it all behind and become someone else entirely.

Deeply dissatisfied with their lives, each passes through a door into a different world. They change occupations and families; one changes gender; a woman falls in love -- with another woman. At some point in their new lives, the mysterious Ariel, who may or may not be a fallen angel, appears to give them a second choice -- stay in the new life or return to your old one. In the end, four choose to return to their original lives. One doesn’t.

Alexander is a fantasy novelist who made an international splash with The Secrets of Jin-shei, a book set in an alternate Imperial China. Like Jin-shei, Midnight at Spanish Gardens, deals in multiple overlapping lives, but in the here and now.

The author based the restaurant in Midnight at Spanish Gardens on a real one in South Africa that is now out of business. She describes it in lyrical prose, painting a loving portrait of an extraordinary place.
--------------------------
You walk down a shuttered street; turn into a narrow alley you should never have known was there. At the end of the alley, there’s a courtyard. And at the far end of the courtyard… there’s Spanish Gardens.
.
This place serves up your past like one of its fabled Irish Coffees – all froth and innocence on top and the dark, bittersweet mystery below – and watches you drain it, and then try to scry for your future in the patterns left behind on the walls of your glass.

You come here to laugh, to cry, to mourn, to celebrate – the place where only truth can be spoken, where you are forced to look all your most cherished illusions in the eye and watch them look down first and slink away like ghosts into the shadows leaving only the shining core of your own true self behind.

This is where you come to learn who and what you were, and are, and may become. You leave the ivied and hallowed walls of the edifices of higher education, and your textbooks, and your professors, and your exams; you come here for the love and the laughter and the understanding. You abandon education, and come seeking wisdom,
---------------------------
In addition to finely drawn characters and a setting that will stick in your mind long after you close the book or turn off your e-reader, this is a novel about issues and ideas which are sharp, pointed and contemporary, ideas such as failing to live up to other people’s expectations, human trafficking, the demands of life choices which can shatter a human soul, same-sex relationships, and the true meaning of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is a book likely to remain with you long after it is put down because it gives no easy answers, just a vision that every life lived well is responsible only to itself and to nothing and nobody else in the end. The novel shines an uncompromising light onto our reality through a prism of the ever-so-slightly fantastic – and the shadows cast are startling, and easy to lose oneself in. ( )