I deeply enjoyed this book. There are multiple reasons I wasn't certain I would (matter-of-fact writing style, starts out in IMO overused war-time England, centers on a seemingly fairly "plain jain" character). But after the first couple chapters, there's a pivotal moment, and from then on I was sucked in–I read it all in just a few sittings.⁣
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Patricia Cowan is a very old woman who lives in a nursing home. She forgets things and gets confused regularly. Some days there is a lift in the home; other days it is not there and she quietly uses the stairlift. She also remembers the entirety of her lives before she came to the home. Lives, because she remembers two. She had 3 children. She had 4 children. She was married to a man. She was partnered with a woman. She lived in England her whole life. She spent half her time in Italy.⁣
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This book is like a dual epic: taking you through Patricia/Trisha/Trish/Pat's entire lives and the history of the world surrounding them. It offers up two distinct alternate histories of the modern world. But epics are usually quite long. Somehow Walton manages to accomplish this feat in an average number of pages, revealing an individual's thoughts and emotions and the expansive world backdrop in an equally compelling way.⁣
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What this book lacks in prose, it more than makes up for in the questions it offers up, and gets so close to answering (but doesn't - that's your job): Does a person's entire life change based on a single decision? Just one life, or history itself? Who's happiness matters - mine, yours, the world?⁣
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I'm on a streak of saying this, but it's true for this book as well... This one was unlike anything I've read before!⁣
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