Among Others and My Real Children by Jo Walton

It’s been a while since my last post in the Books category early February, 32 fiction books further by my count. Recently Cory Doctorow pointed to the work of Welsh / Canadian author Jo Walton on the occasion of the publication of her latest novel Everybody’s Perfect, and I read some of her work these past two weeks. Among Others (2012) turned out to be a beautiful and moving coming of age story, about living with trauma and grief. The escape that reading offers, and the many pointers to pre 1980 SF works were also woven nicely into it. Makes me revisit older SF works, and had me buy some more of Vonnegut’s work I realised I haven’t read as far as I remember. My Real Children (2014) recounts two versions of a woman’s life, bifurcating from a ‘now or never’ demand made by her fiancée after she has graduated at Oxford shortly after WWII. Neither life is in our timeline as such, but close enough to it. Both lines end with dementia, in which she can’t keep both of them apart anymore.…