My Real Children – Jo Walton

I’ve seen Jo Walton books – mostly in the sci-fi sections – a lot and never before went to pick them up.  Seeing her speak on the Literary Tastes panel at ALA encouraged me to read the giveaway book – My Real Children.  This book won the RUSA Reading List genre award for Women’s Fiction. Jo seemed a little surprised to be winning in that particular category but took it well.  She talked about doing a lot of crossover fiction – fiction that crosses genres – in this case an alternative history that focuses on women and issues of interest to women (which is different than Women’s Issues with capital letters). This book was interesting to read – I like her clean narrative style.  It didn’t have the emotional depth that I look for in fiction.  It read like a wikipedia entry – many things to interest the brain but nothing that evokes feeling.  I’m OK with this, but I miss the empathy. The plot revolves a woman sliding into dementia who remembers living two distinctly different lives that forked from a single decision about whether or not to marry a specific man.  Jo handles this cleanly and does a great job of portraying these different worlds.  There is a little bit of discussion as to how this one decision of one woman could have had such an impact on world events, but frankly I found that a bit hand-wavy and disappointing. Still, a good, imaginative exploration of some possible results of the decisions we make every day.