If you had to choose, would you marry for stability, or for excitement? Would you prioritize family life, or chase your professional dreams in the big city? These are just some of the choices readers must navigate in the nearly 100-year-old interactive romance novel, “Consider the Consequences.” Co-written by a feminist author from Bangor, it’s recognized as the original choose your own adventure book.
Now, it’s getting a second life, thanks to London-based Pushkin Press which plans to re-publish the book in the U.S. on Sept. 30. “All Things Considered” host Ari Snider spoke with Pushkin’s senior commissioning editor Daniel Seton about the book’s history, its surprisingly progressive worldview, and how it fits into the broader landscape of interactive storytelling.
Ari Snider: Can you tell me about the original “Consider the Consequences” book, why was it significant?
Daniel Seton: I first came across the mention of “Consider the Consequences” in an article in The New Yorker magazine, and it was actually an article about choose-your-own-adventure books in general. And this article was all about how there’s a resurgence in interest in the choose your own adventure format today. It sort of struck a chord with me, and I remember thinking, “Yeah, it’s true that everyone I speak to has such fond memories of those choose your own adventure books from their childhoods.” And it happened to mention in this article that the first ever choose-your-own-adventure book, “Consider the Consequences,” was published in 1930 which really got me interested, because that’s just a lot earlier than I would have expected. It seems very experimental. I don’t think it’s a book that made huge waves in the 1930s in America when it was published, but I think it’s one of those books that, you know, we see its significance now in what it’s created. I’m not sure that the authors would have anticipated having such a big impact on literature.
Snider: So one of those authors, Mary Alden Hopkins, was born in Bangor in the late 1800s and she went on to become deeply engaged in politics. What can you tell me about her engagement in politics and what her activism looked like?
Seton: She was a very politically progressive person. She was a campaigner for women’s suffrage. She was interested in pacifism, vegetarianism. So I think you can definitely see that in the way that “Consider the Consequences” is structured. She grew up in quite a conservative family, and apparently her mother had some mental health problems, which, at the time, were interpreted to mean that taking responsibility for her family was extremely stressful for her and caused her to suffer mentally. And I think Mary, as a child, she felt kind of guilty for that, like she was making her mother ill. And I definitely think you can see that in the book. There are quite a few decisions where a character has to decide, should they pursue their own happiness, or should they look after a parent? That must reflect something in her own life. You know, I already touched on the fact that the book is more progressive than I would have expected. When you are, for example, confronted with a choice about whether you should pursue your career or start a family, you’re not always punished for the choice to pursue your career, as you might have anticipated for a book written in that time. Often, it turns out that, you know, Helen [the central character] is happier if she goes off and pursues her career in New York than she is staying and, you know, doing the kind of domestic thing that might have been expected of a woman in that time.
Snider: And from the reader’s perspective, how does the book work?
Seton: You can play as one of three characters. The first character, Helen, is a young woman, and the first choice she’s confronted with is between two potential suitors. One of them is Jed Harringdale, who is a flashy, handsome, lovable, but ultimately untrustworthy and unreliable guy who she’s just convinced that she can sort him out, if she can only get him married, that he’ll settle down. On the other hand, the other suitor is a guy called Saunders Mead who is very dependable, but a bit dull. I would say, basically, it’s great fun to play, and it’s written with real wit, humor, warmth and humanity. It’s really surprising and unpredictable. You can’t see the events in it coming. So it really starts to feel quite real. And again, the fact that you then get to play as the three different characters just adds a whole extra level of depth.
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.
