Review: "My Real Children" by Jo Walton

Corsair, 2014. 317 pages.
Rating: ★★★★★ (5 stars)
Source: Amazon Marketplace

Summary (via Goodreads): "It is 2015 and Patricia Cowan is very old. ‘Confused today’ read the notes clipped to the end of her bed. Her childhood, her years at Oxford during the Second World War – those things are solid in her memory. Then that phone call and…her memory splits in two. She was Trish, a housewife and mother of four. She was Pat, a successful travel writer and mother of three. She remembers living her life as both women, so very clearly. Which memory is real – or are both just tricks of time and light?"

My thoughts: My Real Children is a beautiful, immersive and thought-provoking read. I found it effortlessly absorbed both the mind and emotions, and I felt myself instantly caught up in the lives of Pat and Trish. Each time I picked this book up, even if only intending to read a few pages, I found it hard to put down. I stayed up well past my bedtime three nights in a row while reading this book, perfectly content to go to work tired if it meant getting the chance to read just one more chapter.

The chapters of this book alternate between the lives of Pat and Trish, but unlike other books I have read with a similar structure, I didn't find myself preferring one over the other (which I find always spoils the reading experience just a little, no matter how wonderful the book is otherwise). With this book, I found each story was equally intriguing, though for very different reasons. Trish's life is one of personal unhappiness, but set in a world that is much more peaceful than Pat's, or indeed our own ("The world had become quietly socialist, quietly less racist, less homophobic." - Chapter 34). Pat's world, by contrast, was one of violence, destruction and tyranny - a terrifying world of nuclear war, fallout, destruction and death, alongside the accompanying terror of intolerance and a political slide to the right. Yet this is the world in which Pat has such powerful, beautiful happiness of her own. Rejecting Mark's dubious marriage proposal in this world, Pat becomes a successful travel writer and finds true, lasting love in her partner Bee. I found the contrast between the two worlds, on their individual and global levels, a very powerful component of this book. There is a deep sadness in holding the two sets of memories side by side, as each lacks happiness on the level where in the other it shines brightly.

This book is one that really tugs the heart strings. It made me cry a number of times. And despite at times skimming only lightly across the lives of Pat and Trish as time passes, this book still made me care so very deeply for many of the characters, for all the children and grandchildren, for the friends and loved ones in both lives. It also made me feel intensely angry at times - angry at Mark's hateful, bullying treatment of Trish, angry at the senseless violence and destruction in Pat's world, angry at the fact the Pat and Bee could never marry or be officially acknowledged as a family in their world. This book, Pat's world in particular, also stirred up a sense of fear - what would it take for our world to get that bad and would we be powerless to stop it? It's a kind of fear that makes you want to go out and do something - speak up, protest, rage against injustice until the tide turns. Because what if, as Patrica wonders in her final days, it really is just one little thing that makes all the difference? ("Two roads diverged in a yellow wood..." etc.)

While this book definitely falls strongly into the categories of alternate history and speculative fiction, it also has a very domestic focus. I loved this mix. It puts me in mind a little of Kate Atkinson's wonderful Life After Life, which I read earlier in the year. Both are family dramas told in a unique, magical way, and both make you ponder the importance of choices and the power of individual decisions. Both I also found to be deeply captivating, drawing me in deeper with each turn of the page. My Real Children isn't necessarily a flawless novel, but I found the reading experience so rich and charming that I can't help but give it five stars. Quite simply, I adored this book.

Other reviews:
My Real Children review – a high-concept modern fairytale. A review by Gwyneth Jones for The Guardian. Gives a great overview of the book and speculates on what questions it might be raising.

Review by Alix E. Harrow on Strange Horizons. A lovely review. I particularly liked this bit: "My Real Children invites us to wander down the illusory spiderwebs of our own pasts, to find our own breaking points."

Review by Ana on her wonderful blog things mean a lot. This review is a wonderful, thought-provoking exploration of the ideas and questions this book raises. I am very grateful to Ana for her  review, as this was how I first heard about this book (and discovered Jo Walton's writing). Thank you!