In both “Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story,” by Russell Banks, and “Parallel Universes,” by Etgar Keret, multiple worlds are used in two different ways to cope with a loss being experienced by the main characters of the narratives.
“Parallel Universes” has the most common form of multiple worlds as the individual that narrates begins with “There’s a theory that says there are billions of other universes” and goes on to imagine those other universes. However, this concept of other universes are used as a coping method for loss. As it is said “There are some parallel universes where I am having sex with a horse, and ones where I win the lottery,” and so on and so forth, but “The only ones that interest [them] are the ones where she isn’t happily…