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Work InformationMy Real Children by Jo Walton
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. 2.5 stars ( ) Definitely engrossing. I couldn't figure out if there was more to the puzzle of the book than I was seeing—I think probably not; it's supposed to be a simple, elegant parable. If the speculative elements had been more novel, I might have been more moved by the ending, but I nevertheless found it an emotionally engaging read, even though Patricia's two lives are recounted at such a distance. Maybe because it makes you think long and hard about how choices* reflect values, yet are stones thrown into a chaotic universe. About how, as Margaret Atwood says, "We are all stuck in time, less like flies in amber - nothing so hard and clear - but like mice in molasses." *One potential issue is that I'm not convinced that we do make choices, not in the sense that Walton depicts here, but that's better reserved for a late night philosophy discussion. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesGallimard, Folio SF (631) Awards
It's 2015, and Patricia Cowan is very old. "Confused today," read the notes clipped to the end of her bed. She forgets things she should know-what year it is, major events in the lives of her children. But she remembers things that don't seem possible. She remembers marrying Mark and having four children. And she remembers not marrying Mark and raising three children with Bee instead. She remembers the bomb that killed President Kennedy in 1963, and she remembers Kennedy in 1964, declining to run again after the nuclear exchange that took out Miami and Kiev. Her childhood, her years at Oxford during the Second World War, those were solid things. But after that, did she marry Mark or not? Did her friends all call her Trish, or Pat? Had she been a housewife who escaped a terrible marriage after her children were grown, or a successful travel writer with homes in Britain and Italy? And the moon outside her window: does it host a benign research station, or a command post bristling with nuclear missiles? No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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