My Real Children ( Book review)

‘My Real Children’ by Jo Walton

If I had looked fully at the description of this book as being Sc-fi Fantasy I wouldn’t have picked it up at the library. I just looked at the author bit and read she was from Wales, but now living in Canada born 1964, the same year as my daughter, who is also called Jo, although I always call her Joanne and she too was born in Wales. I have silly reasons why I chose certain books. But omgosh I really liked this book. Even before the story started to unfold, I knew it was a book I would enjoy, because it was written well, no silly long facile descriptions of what people were wearing, which I hate and is often found in some books which I close unread after the first few pages.

It opens with the old Patricia very confused,  in a nursing home remembering her life but which life pathway was real? Patricia, Patty, Patsy, Pat or Tricia, Trish, all the same woman. But two different lives, all decided by an answer to a question, one answer ‘yes’, the other ‘never. That really is the crux of this story; how one decision, one answer, can shape a whole lifetime, and the lives of those who come next. How generations of one family can be formed because of what one single person decided to do. The two stories then run concurrently, a chapter at a time.

Who is Patricia? Is she Trish, or is she Pat? Was she married with a family, a supply teacher and homemaker, or was she a bohemian travel writer, fighting for her rights and determined to live her life as she wants to? Both of these women have a wonderfully intricate story to tell and Jo Walton has so cleverly created two hugely different lives. I loved both Pat, lesbian with partner Bee and Tricia down trodden wife of a sod of a husband. It is cleverly interweaved with the history of the fifties through to present time, but also fiction, which are absolutely fascinating. For example, we read of Pat struggling to get a mortgage in the 1950’s as a single woman; of her liberation from her husband, Mark and childbirth with the introduction of the contraceptive pill in 1961 but also of ‘Prince Charles and Princess Camilla’ and of couples getting married on the moon.
In one narrative we are in a world where John F. Kennedy was killed by a bomb in 1963, and in the other, transported to a world where Kennedy chose not to run in 1964 after an escalated Cuban Missile Crisis led to the nuclear obliteration of Miami and Kiev. In one, by 1985, AIDS and leukaemia could be cured. In the other, Pat loses a son to AIDS and because of the fallout from the nuclear bombs people die of cancers. For me, this is a story that is unique and original and beautiful. It's intriguing and it's confusing, yet it is filled with emotion and passion and characters who are forward-thinking and beyond the norm, yet are realistically portrayed.

A book well worth reading, perhaps more than once, in case some little details are missed. I think Jo Walton must know Italy well as her descriptions are completely delicious and along with Pat and Bee, I absolutely revelled in the art, the architecture, the scenery and the food. I am so glad I chanced upon this book.  I found this a completely fascinating, rich and enthralling read. I think I might look at other books by Jo Walton.

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