cahn | Lifelode (Walton)

3+/5. Lifelode was recced to me as a book with great mom characters and lots of housework. It's very hard to find, and

thistleingrey happened to have a copy that she very kindly sent to me. (Thank you!!) Of course I happened to be going through this period where I wasn't reading very much, so I didn't feel up to tackling it until now. (I will say that it's one of those books where reading it takes somewhat more concentration than, oh, Murderbot.)

It's a secondary-world fantasy about cozy domesticity involving four people in a poly relationship. The world has some quite interesting worldbuilding going on -- the whole time I was thinking, "This reminds me of Vernor Vinge's Zones of Thought," and sure enough in an afterword-interview Walton revealed that figuring out how to translate the Zones to a fantasy environment was one of her inspirations. There's god-worldbuilding that I think is very cool. There's a plot, and a rather interesting (and non-cozy) one that plays into all this worldbuilding (and which I really liked), but it really doesn't come into its own until near the end; most of the book is concerned with the cozy domesticity issues. Which -- cozy domesticity fantasy is totally my jam and I loved all these things about it, but I was surprised that this got published at all (given that cozy domestic fantasy doesn't seem to have a huge fan base) until I looked it up and discovered it was published by NESFA and no big publisher seems to have wanted to pick it up.

Interestingly enough, the parts of it I didn't like as much aren't related (or have negative correlation) to the parts I didn't think would be commercially viable. The biggest problem is that I first became aware of this book (if only implicitly) in a review Walton wrote of Tehanu, and pretty much no author can handle being compared to Le Guin, it's just a fact.

Unpacking that a little -- and if I'd read this ten years ago I probably would not have had this particular problem with it -- I've, um, lived through a lot of domesticity in the last ten years, and observed it in other people's lives, and a major problem I have reading it in 2019 instead of 2009 is that I felt there wasn't enough domesticity in some ways. For example, I kept asking the book, "Where are all the old people?" Not, of course, that one can't have a book, or a life, without old people, especially in this world in the US, but in a more-or-less organic family-based society like the one postulated in this book, there are going to be old people somewhere around, and some of the housekeeping work is going to be involved with them and the burdens imposed by age. I suppose Hanethe counts as an old person, sort of, but in a cheating sort of way, as she hasn't aged physically all that much due to her travels in the East. (I told you the worldbuilding was interesting!) Kids exist in this book, but not in the all-consuming way I feel like they... kind of do in this world? There's only one toddler who gets on-stage in the book, and she is a darling little thing who comes in, vocalizes cutely, and goes right back out again, without there being any wiping of poopy bottoms, vomiting, loads of laundry due to said poopy bottoms and vomit, tantrums because no one understands what the vocalization is supposed to mean, meltdowns when a child stays up too late or hasn't eaten at exactly the right time, worry when the kid isn't hitting all of her milestones... (The kid does wake up in the middle of the night and has to be soothed back to sleep, but even that goes extremely well.) The thing is, it's not like I would have expected to see all of those things, or even most. But not having any of them seems like... a curiously glossy, idealized version of housework and domestic labor. Or, as

ase put it, an impressionistic view, which is a kinder way of putting it, and honestly on par with what I think of Walton's other work; I think Walton's books that have been most successful with me have been the ones where an impressionistic view works with the story (e.g., The Just City, which I loved and which is unabashedly a sketched-in thought experiment; and Among Others -- which I read recently and I know I have not talked about reading and maybe I will sometime -- where it's really part of the plot). But it doesn't work so much for me with domesticity, I guess.

(In Tehanu, in contrast, the book starts with Ogion dying (and Auntie Moss is another older person in the book). And Therru is older, so none of the toddler issues, but I still thought her relationship with Tenar was believable -- Tenar worries about her, teaches her; they are present in each other's lives, in a way I never really felt like the kids in Lifelode were present. (Of course, Tehanu has the problem of Therru magically calling a dragon god to fix everything, yay!! but that's a different issue. Lifelode... does not run into exactly that problem? although the story still gets warped by, well, non-domesticity.)

I'll also confess to having a personal kneejerk response to the title word. In the book, a lifelode is something between a job and a career and a life calling. Even though a character takes great pains to point out that a lifelode can change over a person's lifetime, the name itself implies something about it that... well... I have never felt that there's any one thing in my life I would describe as a "lifelode." I have a job, that I really like but which I'm also quite happy to leave at the end of the day; I am a parent, which I also really like but I'm also quite happy dropping the kids off at school/daycare; I write rants about books and operas and make jewelry and make music and make fic at various times, swapping out (e.g., I haven't done any jewelry-making for years now, but may be starting back up again), which obviously I also really like (and don't want to do all the time either). I would be very uncomfortable describing any of those as a lifelode. So that whole part of it sort of makes my hackles rise a bit, although now that I'm thinking about it, in the context of the book and the plot it strikes me as rather a brilliant title.

Anyway, Walton's books always make me think, and this one is no exception!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

rachelmanija

I had some similar reactions to this book. I love domestic fantasy and it's quite rare, so I enjoyed this as an example of it, and the worldbuilding was really really cool. But I also found the kids very idealized, which I wouldn't mind in, say, a romance, but which stuck out oddly here.

I like the concept of a lifelode and would have liked to see it explored even more. Like, does everyone even have one, or is it more of an ideal than a common (let alone universal) reality? Can you have more than one at the same time, or is that definitionally impossible? If you can have more than one, is there a maximum number beyond which people feel you're diluting the concept.

I do feel like I have one, but I've had multiple ones at various times plus one I've always had (writer), so at any given time I'm likely to have two or more.

ETA: My original review.

Edited Date: 2019-05-15 05:00 am (UTC)

From:

cahn

(psst your link doesn't work, but I found it anyway) I like your comparisons -- I love In This House of Brede like anything (although the reveal about the main character's kid is so painful that I find myself avoiding the book for only that reason) and I need to go back and read The Perilous Hills, because I read it when I was too young to enjoy domestic fantasy. (I did absolutely adore the similar vibe, tailored to college, of Tam Lin.)

I got the vibe from the way people were talking about things like "what's my lifelode going to be?" that most people did have one, although it's also said at one point that Chayra was the first wife (in the manor) in a while who worked, so maybe not? It may also just have meant that most of the manor wives had housework as their lifelode, it's not clear to me. But yes, given that it's the title (and given Walton's track record with digging into oddities) I was expecting more discussion of it!

From:

thistleingrey

interesting! Thanks for writing up your thoughts.

From:

cahn

Thank you so much for the book! I had a great time with it :) And apologies it took me so long to read!

I'm very curious to know what you thought of it (although obviously don't feel compelled in any way).

From:

thistleingrey

I didn't read it, which is one reason I felt free to send it to you, since you wanted actually to read it. :)

I quit Walton with the dragon!Trollope one, uh *looks*, Tooth and Claw, which I liked. I read the Small Change books anyway and kept wanting them to do something other than what Walton had wanted, which is mostly my problem, I figure, and then I stubbed my toe badly upon Among Others. I think you should be able to see this link. I still rec Walton's Sulien (alt-Arthurian) books to people, but I am done, there is no touching the Thessaly books, and I shipped my copy of My Real Children to another friend whom I thought would like it. I can't.

From:

cahn

I read Farthing and disliked it quite a bit; I was expecting it to be a murder mystery and it turned out to be what I felt was a fairly heavy-handed dystopia instead (and not in addition to; the mystery wasn't much of one), and I thought that was kind of obnoxious. Probably, as you say, my problem. I haven't read Tooth and Claw.

I remember reading your post on Among Others! Years before I actually read it, which I did this year over spring break, and liked it, or at least had a lot of thinky thoughts about it. Well, I promised

seekingferret I'd write it up, so... I'll do that soon :)

From:

thistleingrey

Looking forward to your post, when you have time!

From:

cahn

Here! https://cahn.dreamwidth.org/152555.html

From:

landingtree

That's very interesting -- it hadn't occurred to me that the perfectness of the children was strange, but it makes sense that it wouldn't, I haven't spent much time around children since I was one.

I absolutely head-over-heels loved the first third of the book, with the worldbuilding and the relationships coming through all out of order but making perfect sense, a gentle free-associative ramble. And then it became more linear and got more plot, and I still liked it, but not as much. I would really have liked the ramble to go on longer, taking in more of the plot, and, I don't know, putting in the potentially-world-changing events at the two-thirds mark before going back into a different room of the house? It's a strange book and I wish it were stranger. But I think Walton writes somewhere that she tried to have less plot and discovered how difficult that was, so I shouldn't complain. (Until I've tried it. Someday I may dare).

I like 'lifelode' as a cultural concept like 'career', which fits different people better or worse. It's a long time since I've read the book, though, so I'm not sure what discussion it gets. I don't have a lifelode, in the sense of one since thing which is duty and passion and place in the world. I have 'writer' and [presumably I will fill this box at some point].

From:

cahn

Ha, yes, I think she writes that in the essay on Tehanu I quoted above. I once tried writing a Yarrow Earthsea fic and had the same thing happen, so... yeah. But yes, I adore the sort of book that's all just a ramble going nowhere in particular --

rachelmanija mentioned In This House of Brede, and I just picked up and reread for the nth time A Tree Grows in Brooklyn -- I adore both of those like anything (except for the really painful child death in Brede).

"Lifelode" is definitely a more evocative word than "career," and I think it makes sense that it fits some people and not others -- my weird response was definitely personal, it not fitting me :)

From:

luzula

I too do not have a lifelode. I am a teacher, and a forest activist, and a union organizer, and a nature nerd, and an outdoors person, and periodically a writer. Etc. It seems reductive to force all of what I am and do into just one thing? We can be part of multiple social contexts.

From:

cahn

Yeah. Part of my kneejerk response was also because I felt in the 90's we kept getting bombarded with exhortations to "live your passion," and this reminded me of it...

From:

seekingferret

I'm interested in your thoughts on Among Others!

From:

cahn

OK! I will try to write something soon. The short answer is that as someone who used to be a geeky misfit kid and who has read lots of SF from the... 70's, I guess it was?... I was pretty much the target audience.

From:

seekingferret

Hmm... Yeah. I was pretty much in the target audience to be pandered to also, and I liked the parts that pandered to me, but overall I thought the plot, especially the school plots, moved too slowly and not enough interesting happened until the end.

From:

cahn

Heh. Clearly you are not a boarding-school-book reader! Boarding school books being some of my favorites, I was actually sort of surprised that a plot happened at all.

(Um. Don't read Lifelode, you'll have the same problem.)

From:

seekingferret

I mean, the boarding school books I read as a kid were, you know, Bruno and Boots and things like that. Shit happened on every page. :P

From:

philomytha

Yeah, I don't get the concept of a 'lifelode' personally either, I know exactly what you mean there. I've always been a jack of all trades type rather than a one-single-focus type.

Your description of the kids is reminding me of that Jeeves & Wooster plotline where Bertie's going to reunite a couple by using a cutely lisping kid to ask them if they're a mummy and a daddy, or something like that, only it comes unstuck because the cute kid just wants sweets and then screams at everyone and runs away. I may be misremembering the details, but the contrast between 'cute kid using its cuteness to further our plot agenda' and 'actual child having a tantrum and in no way wanting to cooperate with your plot agenda unless you cooperate with its sweetie-eating agenda' was so perfect, and it sounds like it's what this book lacks.

From:

cahn

Yeah, and the other thing is that for a very long time I felt like it wasn't cool not to have an all-consuming passion, so this brought up all that insecurity :)

'actual child having a tantrum and in no way wanting to cooperate with your plot agenda unless you cooperate with its sweetie-eating agenda' HEE. My Jeeves & Wooster reading has been sadly neglected (well, nonexistent); I definitely need to check this out.

From:

forestofglory

Oh,that was my rec. I'm glad you where able to get a copy and enjoyed reading it.

I remember really just loving the whole book but I haven't reread it since my kid was born so the childcare bits would probably bother me more if I reread it now.

From:

cahn

Yes! Thank you for the rec! I really did enjoy it, and it's the sort of book -- I think Jo Walton is this way in general -- that the parts I didn't agree with are at least as interesting as the parts I agreed with, because they make me think.

But yeah, I think I would not have been bothered by the childcare bits before my kids were born :)

From:

scioscribe

I love books about domesticity but came away feeling oddly lukewarm about Lifelode in a way I couldn't really put my finger on until you nailed it. I appreciate the idea of the domesticity here--and got kind of annoyed when the plot intruded on a grand scale--but I can't really recall any of the specifics. (Whereas with other domestic novels, I can: I can still tell you about shopping for medieval music and making a new dress in The Interior Life, for example.) It doesn't have sufficient texture. Like you said, some of the bumps and intensities are missing; that impressionistic feel leaves too much out. So I wind up liking the book a lot more in theory than I do in reality.

That being said, while I see the niggling difficulties with "lifelode" as a concept--and I do think it's weirdly unclear on whether or not having one is supposed to be universal--I love the word, which somehow feels more evocative than "vocation." Like it's what your life actually centers on by default, if it centers on anything. This is also the book with "raensome," right? I've found that very useful.

From:

isis

Hah, I was just going to ask

cahn if she'd read The Interior Life because that was the first thing I thought of when I read "mom characters and lots of housework."

From:

cahn

...no, but clearly I need to!

From:

isis

It's free at the author's website! http://kithrup.com/~djheydt/ I also really loved The Witch of Syracuse.

I recommend setting your ereader to use the specified fonts rather than your own, because although they are not always easy to read, they help delineate the different worlds within this book. (There are actually three different worlds: Sue's ordinary life, the fantasy world, and a spirit world within that fantasy world. Each has its own font.)

From:

cahn

!!!! This is the person who wrote the Cynthia stories! I remember reading those in Sword and Sorceress and always being so excited when a new S&S came out and there was a Cynthia story in it. I wish she would collect these into a book, I'd buy it in a hot second. Thank you!!

From:

isis

The Witch of Syracuse IS the collected Cynthia stories, so download away!

From:

cahn

YOU JUST MADE MY DAY. YAY!

From:

cahn

Yes! It's all sort of mixing together in my head, and it hasn't been that long since I've read it! Also I clearly need to read The Interior Life, which seems totally like something I would enjoy.

I agree the word itself is actually kind of cool. Like, the concept sort of bothers me in fact because it's so present in the word itself -- a lodestone that your life orients itself towards? As a word, it's really neat! And yes, "raensome" is in this book, and it's a good word too.

From:

duskpeterson

Cozy domestic fantasy! Now I know what I want to be seeking out. Since it's your jam, do you have any more recs?

From:

cahn

It reminded me the most of Tam Lin (Pamela Dean), which is not exactly the same -- it's cozy college fantasy -- but which hits the same buttons. Dean also wrote The Dubious Hills, which is sort of cozy domestic fantasy but which I was definitely not old enough to read when I read it.

Le Guin does this, of course; Tehanu and the later Earthsea books have a lot of this going on, and I feel sure if I thought about it I'd be able to come up with more Le Guin books, but I think you've read those anyway :)

And then there are lots of non-fantasy books; not sure if you're as interested in those, but In This House of Brede was one that

rachelmanija brought up (content warning for the remembered death of a child which is not at all explicit but implicitly pretty gruesome), and last week I picked up A Tree Grows in Brooklyn meaning to just reread one bit but then (as always happens) read the whole thing instead...

ETA: Also see The Interior Life, recced above with a link! I haven't read it yet but have read short stories by that author and it looks totally like something I would love.

Edited Date: 2019-05-16 04:40 pm (UTC)

From:

duskpeterson

Don't get me started on non-fantasy domestic fiction - I own hundreds of twentieth-century children's domestic novels. :) But I'm always looking for similar books, so thank you so much for your recs!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I either haven't read or haven't liked most of the books in this post and comment discussion, so take the suitability of my reading tastes with a grain of salt, but if you're looking for cozy domestic fantasy, one of my recs is always A String in the Harp. Set primarily in twentieth century Wales, interspersed with fantastical visions of the sixth century and a bit of time travel.

cahn's review thereof.