This was rather a strange book. An old lady named Patricia is in a ursing home and she is having memory trouble. That, of course, is nothing unusual. But Patricia (or is she Pat, or Patsy, or Trish?) remembers too much instead of too little. Somehow she has the memory of two different lives, each beginning with a decision she made as a young woman on the late forties: should she quit teaching and get married, or not?
Destiny is a concept that fascinates me: do our choices shape our lives, or is everything fated to happen? Or could it be both? This novel explores the idea that one choice can change everything. In one life, Pat marries Mark, who is really a wretched husband, and she becomes a housewife with four children. Alternatively, she declines Mark's proposal and continues her teaching job, becoming her own woman and eventually marrying for love. In that life she has three children, who are of course completely different people from the other life.
Which ones are her real children? And why are both worlds so far apart from each other? In one life the world is on the brink of nuclear war, and the world in the other life is a more peaceful place. Neither world is our own reality. Did this one person's choice change the whole world somehow?
While this was an interesting story and I love these kinds of questions, I do wish that the book had a few more answers. I did not like the general unresolvedness of the novel, but it was still a good read.
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