My Real Children, Jo Walton
Feb. 7th, 2016 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackUnsurprisingly, this is really good! It's the whole story of Patricia's life, told in flashback from her nursing home where she is losing her memory. Except that it's actually two lives, in two parallel worlds, which combines badly with losing her memory anyway.
It covers a lot of the social and geopolitical themes of the second half of the 20th century. Nucelar armament. Moonbases. AIDS. Feminism, in several models. Gay and poly relationships.
It's less depressing than I feared: yes, people die, including the protagonist soon, but that's unavoidable for a whole life, to me, the message felt more like "all lives have redeeming features".
The two bits I found most difficult were reading about her marriage in one world to her young love, who, once she's a wife, completely dismisses her as a person, expecting her to do everything, but failing to respect her opinion or competence at anything :(
And when she went into the home and couldn't take her Mac, which she used for keeping notes, and looking up words she'd forgotten, and realised she was going to sever completely the connection a normal life :(
But in both worlds, she has lovely children who become people, and grow up, and it's really touching.
It covers a lot of the social and geopolitical themes of the second half of the 20th century. Nucelar armament. Moonbases. AIDS. Feminism, in several models. Gay and poly relationships.
It's less depressing than I feared: yes, people die, including the protagonist soon, but that's unavoidable for a whole life, to me, the message felt more like "all lives have redeeming features".
The two bits I found most difficult were reading about her marriage in one world to her young love, who, once she's a wife, completely dismisses her as a person, expecting her to do everything, but failing to respect her opinion or competence at anything :(
And when she went into the home and couldn't take her Mac, which she used for keeping notes, and looking up words she'd forgotten, and realised she was going to sever completely the connection a normal life :(
But in both worlds, she has lovely children who become people, and grow up, and it's really touching.