My Real Children (Jo Walton)

Patricia, the protagonist in this story, leads two different lives. One day a man tells her she must decide at that moment whether to marry him, now or never. She chooses now, and goes into a marriage filled with strife. She chooses never and goes into life unmarried, and into a very different relationship. Both of these lives play out side by side, in different worlds with histories that diverge from that point not just personally but globally. The stories of the two lives were interesting, but with a certain narrative distance that kept me from becoming as engaged as I would have liked. I stayed with it to the end partly to find out what happened to the two different Patricias and partly to find out why she was living in this strange, mirrored way. While I did find out what happened to her, I never did find out why, and this left me feeling unsatisfied. So while I can recommend it for the loveliness of the characterizations, I can't recommend it for those who, like me, want a little more closure in their stories.