Which Way? is an early speculative novel about how a small choice can affect the rest of your life. After a beginning section that introduces us to Claudia Heseltine and gets her to the age of 22, she is presented with a choice of invitations—two by letter and one by phone—for the same weekend. Then the rest of the novel is split into thirds depending upon the invitation she decides to accept.
Claudia is a popular girl with intellectual and cultural interests. She has a close friendship with Hugo Lester, and at the point where the decision comes in, she has promised to visit his family home, and it is clear that he plans to propose to her. So, selecting another of the invitations means breaking her promise.
I found interesting what Benson makes of Claudia’s three fates and how these reflect the times. In two stories she marries, although only in one does she marry Hugo. In one she has a romantic (as opposed to sexual) affair with a married man and in another a full-fledged affair with the same man. All of the stories involve some pain, but Claudia herself changes with the situations she is in, so that in the story where she is faithful to her husband she seems the most superficial and frivolous.
Although, interestingly, she ends up happiest in the story where she remains single, she thinks she has missed the most important things in life—which are, of course, marriage and motherhood. There’s no happy career girl in the novel, although Simon Thomas points out in the Afterword that at her marriage she is much more innocent than he would have expected for the 1920s. In both stories in which she is married, she spends her honeymoon crying after ignoring the vaguely ominous things her mother tries to tell her.
I thought this book was most interesting as a portrait of the times, for the choices that are available and how Claudia views them.
I received this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and fair review.
whatmeread 
Ice review, Kay! I’m putting this book on my to read list!
Thanks, Mary!
I really enjoyed this one, I thought it was very clever, especially the way some scenes came into each “way”!
Yes, as if the choice didn’t entirely change her life.