My Real Children, by Jo Walton

[rachelmanija]

I read this when it first came out; please correct and forgive inaccuracies of memory. (Appropriate to the story

Comments

[sovay]

The woman who agreed became Trish, trapped in a miserably abusive marriage... but also living in the best possible world as far as the general good is concerned, with peace, prosperity, and a moon base. The woman who declined became Pat, who falls in love with a woman, travels, and has a life full of love and self-fulfillment... in a world that slides into nightmarish total war, and seems to headed straight for Armageddon.

Laid out that way, it's very difficult for me to want to read a novel where choosing a healthy lesbian relationship over an abusive straight marriage apparently blows up the world. I am sure it is more nuanced in practice, but it's not like I don't have enough depressing lesbian fiction already available to me if I want it (which I don't) without adding that extra layer.

[rachelmanija]

I'm definitely not saying you're wrong or you should read the book! But let me copy my comment to someone on DW who had the exact same response:

I see what you're saying, and I don't want to sound like I'm arguing. In the book, though, while obviously there are unfortunate implications overall, the lesbian relationship is portrayed as positive and idyllic - if anything, the subtext is "lesbian relationships are awesome, straight relationships suck." I totally see why it comes across very badly in my review, but the book overall gave me the opposite message.

[sovay]

if anything, the subtext is "lesbian relationships are awesome, straight relationships suck." I totally see why it comes across very badly in my review, but the book overall gave me the opposite message.

Understood. I have not read the book and I am not trying to argue that it renders any general judgment on queer relationships versus straight ones. In the abstract, I don't think it helps me to know that the relationship is portrayed positively if the choosing of that relationship is still causally linked to the destruction of the wider world, while suffering through the horrible relationship is the thing that makes the world better. I understand that if the point of the narrative is the rising and falling counterpoint of happiness, there may have been no unproblematic (or -unpleasant) way to write the novel, but I still don't want to read it, however inadvertently or unintentionally it may be reinforcing philosophies I don't agree with/believe in.

[asakiyume]

Does the character as we see her have a sense of having lived both lives? Or is one version primary, but you get intrusions from the other version? Or do we go back and forth between the alternate realities?

Crazy that in both realities--both the one where she's happy and the one where she's miserable--she ends up in a nursing home. "Wars may come and wars may go; peace may flourish and people may colonize the moon... but you're going to end up in a nursing home either way." ... That's a minor thing to fixate on, and I know it's necessary for the story to have her end up there, but still.

Conceptually, I have a problem being shown [just] two realities because it makes it seem as if they're the only two possibilities (which has knock-on implications) for how events could go... from a storytelling perspective, though, I can see how two would be about all you could do if you were going to go in depth. But I do see how it could lead to a tendency to link all the elements causally even if there's no causation.

[rachelmanija]

We see both lives equally. It's implied that there could be an infinite number of timelines, but we only see two.

The Alzheimer's is genetic - her mother also gets it. So that's inescapable unless she dies of something else first. (SO DEPRESSING.)

[asakiyume]

I confess to laughing a little at the full array of depressing factors.

[thewronghands]

Yeah, this was me too. Just a hilarious collection of awful. I have really enjoyed several of Jo Walton's other books (though the Small Change trilogy remains my favorite of what I've read of hers) but I have yet to come across this book when full of cope and raring to read something really depressing.

[tool_of_satan]

It was not clear to me either exactly how the world was changed, nor was it clear to me if it was meant to be implied somewhere or just a mystery.

[houseboatonstyx]

Iirc, on the same day she accepts/rejects the proposal, she is grading papers and lets her happiness (accepting) or sorrow (rejecting) influence what grades she gives. On the happy line, the grades and comments are encouraging; on the sad, discouraging.

Someone's theory was that one of those students, encouraged, went on to do something important.

The lesbian relationship began quite a few years later.

[tool_of_satan]

That makes sense. I forgot that bit.

[ejmam]

I think the book defines causality differently. It's not that any of her actions made the world different, it's that she has the choice to choose between two realities. She didn't force either into existence (no one has the unique responsibility of the entire world), but somehow she can choose which one is real. Or maybe which one is real to her

[tool_of_satan]

In addition to the questions already raised, I'm wondering how people interpreted the ending. My interpretation was that she chose both and that created our actual timeline, which is sort of midway between the two she experienced.