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tangleroot_eli's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
tl;dr: If you want a quiet character study of two similar but slightly different women, try this book. If you want an interesting speculative-fiction take on butterfly effect and alternate realities, try something different.
Around the halfway point of this book, I started dreading picking it up. I skipped to the last chapter, to see what I was heading toward. Then I stopped reading. If I'd read twice as much book to get to that nothingburger ending, I would be twice as irate.
Jo Walton's prose is beautiful and her characters well-drawn. But her plots are meh. I always feel like she wants to write English pastoral novels but fell in with the Tor crowd and so has to find ways to write English pastoral novels that somehow also count as spec. This worked excellently with her Thackeray-with-dragons novel Tooth and Claw, but less well here, where I just never understood why we had to follow Patricia's two lives. I wanted something more like the Doctor Who episode "Amy's Choice," where the characters knew from the beginning that one existence was false and that choosing incorrectly would have real consequences. Not only could I not see how Patricia's choice led to two such different worlds, I also couldn't see how it mattered, from a narrative standpoint.
Around the halfway point of this book, I started dreading picking it up. I skipped to the last chapter, to see what I was heading toward. Then I stopped reading. If I'd read twice as much book to get to that nothingburger ending, I would be twice as irate.
Jo Walton's prose is beautiful and her characters well-drawn. But her plots are meh. I always feel like she wants to write English pastoral novels but fell in with the Tor crowd and so has to find ways to write English pastoral novels that somehow also count as spec. This worked excellently with her Thackeray-with-dragons novel Tooth and Claw, but less well here, where I just never understood why we had to follow Patricia's two lives. I wanted something more like the Doctor Who episode "Amy's Choice," where the characters knew from the beginning that one existence was false and that choosing incorrectly would have real consequences. Not only could I not see how Patricia's choice led to two such different worlds, I also couldn't see how it mattered, from a narrative standpoint.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Dementia and Medical content
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Miscarriage, Death, Sexism, Misogyny, Classism, Death of parent, War, Cancer, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Lesbophobia, Religious bigotry, and Grief
Minor: Homophobia, Terminal illness, Alcohol, Infidelity, Sexual content, and Bullying
Moderate: Ageismteresareads's review
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Cancer, Dementia, Terminal illness, Pregnancy, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Medical content, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Ableism, Death, Death of parent, Suicide attempt, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Infidelity
Minor: Drug use and War
jwells's review
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
I can see why some people didn't like this book, but I found it fascinating how one choice, relatively early in a person's life, completely changed everything that followed. I really enjoyed most of the book, but found the ending quite annoying. Unfortunately it's hard to criticize an ending without spoilers...
1. Patricia's idea that she has to make a choice between the two lives seems to come from nowhere. Why should we believe that her choice would have the power to change the rest of the world? How does she choose, just pick one world inside her head?
2. I also disliked the last sentence:
"She wouldn't have been the person her life had made her if she could have made any other answer."
For me this really highlighted a weakness of the book that hadn't otherwise occurred to me. Patricia's two lives should have made her into two different people. She shouldn't have been able to end up exactly the same, at the end of two such different lives. There should be no single "person her life had made her" since there's on single life she had. Yet, apparently, the two lives have re-converged now, in "Patricia."
I suppose that's what the dementia is for, to blur her personality traits so that Pat and Trish end up being the same person in old age. In that case, is she still "the person her life made her," if she's forgotten that much?
3. In any case, the end of the book explicitly sets up her choice as one between selfishness (happiness with Bee at the expense of the rest of the world) versus self-sacrifice (buying world peace at the expense of her own misery with Mark), so the oh-so-mysterious ending just seemed like a Discussion Question for Book Clubs (TM). "Will she Do the Right Thing?" and that's just irritating.
2. I also disliked the last sentence:
"She wouldn't have been the person her life had made her if she could have made any other answer."
For me this really highlighted a weakness of the book that hadn't otherwise occurred to me. Patricia's two lives should have made her into two different people. She shouldn't have been able to end up exactly the same, at the end of two such different lives. There should be no single "person her life had made her" since there's on single life she had. Yet, apparently, the two lives have re-converged now, in "Patricia."
I suppose that's what the dementia is for, to blur her personality traits so that Pat and Trish end up being the same person in old age. In that case, is she still "the person her life made her," if she's forgotten that much?
3. In any case, the end of the book explicitly sets up her choice as one between selfishness (happiness with Bee at the expense of the rest of the world) versus self-sacrifice (buying world peace at the expense of her own misery with Mark), so the oh-so-mysterious ending just seemed like a Discussion Question for Book Clubs (TM). "Will she Do the Right Thing?" and that's just irritating.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Dementia, Cancer, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual violence, Suicide attempt, and Miscarriage
advcroft's review
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse
Moderate: Miscarriage and Dementia
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