Lifelode (Walton)

[cahn]

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!

Comments

[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!!

[isis]

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

[cahn]

YOU JUST MADE MY DAY. YAY!