[6A8]∎ Libro Free My Real Children Jo Walton 9780765332653 Books

My Real Children Jo Walton 9780765332653 Books

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My Real Children Jo Walton 9780765332653 Books

"My Real Children" has a wonderfully interesting premise. The idea of someone realizing that they could remember having lived two completely different lives over the same period of time held real promise. In execution, the book just dragged on and on for me, reading as a sort of list of Patricia's deeds in her lives. It was interesting at first to read about the different lives Patricia lived, but it turned out to be just reading about two sort of boring, depressing family histories, and it easily grew stale by the half-way point. All the possibility and promise of the central idea of the book is entirely absent except at the beginning and the very end (literally just the first and last chapters). The two lives are told as discrete stories, with no indication that Patricia was ever aware of her other life, and even at the end of the book it is not clear when she began to have this realization. I honestly felt like I was stuck reading some boring Lifetime channel movie script at some points. I like a lot of the book and really, really wanted to love it but just couldn't. I got to where I didn't care what happened to the kids, mothers etc and just wanted to get into exploring the fascinating reality shift, but sadly, that is barely explored at all. I do like the novel's well developed characters, and the writing itself is quite good, but this one was a snoozer for me, personally.


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My Real Children Jo Walton 9780765332653 Books Reviews

Books like these… they make me sad. That’s not really an observation on the book as much as my general feelings about books (or movies or television shows) in which we are with an older character near the end of her life looking back over the life that they have lived. In the book the main character actually gets two fully realized lives with lovers, children, friends and the whole nine yards. In one life it’s a crap marriage and some personal tragedies but a fairly nice normal world to live in while in the other it’s a happy personal life but the world itself sucks- nuclear bombs, horrible cancers. For her both of those worlds are currently running together. Which one did she chose? Which one should she have chosen?
Honestly whether Pat or Tricia it’s very well written. You do care about her. It does get kind of boring as it winds down but again most of life gets kind of boring as it winds down- it felt like a lot of reading off a list the last years; people died, people were born, Pat did this, Tricia did that and then the kids did this and that but those books always get me. The other issue for me was she sees the split in her life as whether or not she decides to marry Mark. While I definitely agree it’s a life choice even before she married him I couldn’t see any reason why she would. Meanwhile her partner in the other life is so perfect that she handles being crippled with the kind of aplomb that could be ascribed to a saint. Not much subtly in the romantic partners so when Patricia sums up her question as which life would you chose for me I couldn’t see how there was any question which one a person would chose.
Jo Walton’s My Real Children may be a science fiction novel about alternate universes — or simply a complicated fantasy in the addled mind of an old woman afflicted with advanced memory loss. Since Walton has written other science fiction novels, it’s probably safe to say that she intended this as sf. But it doesn’t read that way.

The book opens in the present time inside the mind of an Englishwoman who was named Patricia, Patty, Patsy, Trish, or Tricia, depending on which of the two lives she was experiencing at the time and on the circumstances in which she found herself. Born in 1926, she believes she is now nearly 90 years of age. In her mind, history diverged onto two timelines when she was 23 and the man she had been dating proposed marriage.

In one life — that is, in one life along the time-space continuum — she married the man and quickly came to regret it. Suffering under a disdainful and tyrannical husband, she gave birth to four children and now has numerous grandchildren. In the other life, she chose not to accept the man’s proposal. Free from a constricting marriage, she became a successful travel writer and eventually settled into a long-term partnership with another woman. Together with a male friend, they contrived to have three children. As Patricia, Patty, etc., lies near death, she has numerous grandchildren but has outlived one son and one grandson.

If this sounds like a conventional novel, or, better yet, two conventional novels, you wouldn’t be mistaken. What centers it in the realm of science fiction is that in each of the two timelines the world does not develop along the lines in our history. In one, the world is plagued by a number of nuclear exchanges that have killed millions and doomed millions of others to death by cancer from radiation. In the other, first the Russians, then the Europeans, and finally the Americans expand into space, establishing colonies on the moon and Ganymede. Plans for the terraforming of Mars are underway.

Walton’s speculation about two possible lines of historical development is interesting if highly improbable in some ways. For example, she suggests that JFK nuked Kiev in exchange for a Russian nuclear attack on Miami, then declined to run for reelection — and was succeeded in office by his brother, Robert. It’s hard to imagine that if one brother was disgraced in office that the other could be elected to it. Also, Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter, lies 390 million miles from Earth. Surely, given any likely technological development in spaceflight, it would take many years to travel that far. Establishing a colony there would be merely a fantasy for a very long time to come.)

About the author

Jo Walton writes fantasy, science fiction, and poetry. She has won several major awards in both sf and fantasy. Born in Wales, she has lived in Canada for many years. I loved her Small Change trilogy about areal n alternate history of Britain beginning with its defeat in World War II. My Real Children is not in the same class.
"My Real Children" has a wonderfully interesting premise. The idea of someone realizing that they could remember having lived two completely different lives over the same period of time held real promise. In execution, the book just dragged on and on for me, reading as a sort of list of Patricia's deeds in her lives. It was interesting at first to read about the different lives Patricia lived, but it turned out to be just reading about two sort of boring, depressing family histories, and it easily grew stale by the half-way point. All the possibility and promise of the central idea of the book is entirely absent except at the beginning and the very end (literally just the first and last chapters). The two lives are told as discrete stories, with no indication that Patricia was ever aware of her other life, and even at the end of the book it is not clear when she began to have this realization. I honestly felt like I was stuck reading some boring Lifetime channel movie script at some points. I like a lot of the book and really, really wanted to love it but just couldn't. I got to where I didn't care what happened to the kids, mothers etc and just wanted to get into exploring the fascinating reality shift, but sadly, that is barely explored at all. I do like the novel's well developed characters, and the writing itself is quite good, but this one was a snoozer for me, personally.