My Real Children

This is only the second of Jo Walton's books that I've read, but it's safe to say that it cemented my love of her. She has a way of probing the quieter, more mundane moments of our lives to see what sort of magic pops out. And she tells incredible, incredibly human stories with deeply relatable characters that I just want to hug.

In the pantheon of science fiction, this book belongs on the shelf between Arrival and Life After Life. It starts with an old woman in a nursing home. Patricia has dementia, and she is often confused. She remembers two completely different lives: two spouses, two careers, two sets of children. More than that, there are two completely different worlds. One is striving towards peace and knowledge, the other seems intent on destroying itself, neither is exactly our world (as illustrated by JFK's fates).

After the introduction, the book goes back to the beginning, to Patricia's early life and the choice that caused her worlds to diverge. Then it alternates between the two timelines, painting two lives full of joy and love and heartbreak and despair. By the end, Patricia understands that she must choose between her two lives, her two worlds. Walton leaves it ambiguous, though I think there was only one possible choice, given everything the audience learns about Patricia from her two parallel lives.

That question is what keeps me thinking about this book, what caused me to compare it to Arrival. If you knew what was going to happen, would you do it anyway? How could you? How could you not? Is the joy worth the pain? Is it worth anything without the pain? What is one life worth and can it ever really be just one life?

This book is going to stick with me for a long, long time.

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