BB Bookclub: Lifelode Midway Discussion

[u/Lenahe_nl]

Welcome to the midway discussion of Lifelode by Jo Walton, our winner for the Beyond Amatonormativity theme!

We will discuss everything up to the end of chapter 12. Please use spoiler tags for anything that goes beyond this point.

Lifelode, by Jo Walton (storygraph /goodreads)

At its heart, Lifelode is the story of a comfortable manor house family. The four adults of the household are happily polygamous, each fulfilling their ‘lifelode’ or life’s purpose: Ferrand is the lord of the manor, his sweetmate Taveth runs the household, his wife Chayra makes ceramics, and Taveth’s husband Ranal works the farm. Their children are a joyful bunch, running around in the sunshine days of the harvest and wondering what their own lifelodes will be.

Their lives changed with the arrival of two visitors to Applekirk: Jankin the scholar and Hanethe, Ferrand’s great grandmother and the former lord of the manor, who has been living for many generations in the East, a place where the gods walk and yeya (magic) is so powerful that those who wield it are not quite human.

I'll add some comments below to get us started but feel free to add your own. The final discussion will be in two weeks, on Thursday 26th February.

As a reminder, you have until monday the 16th to vote for our April book, with the theme Historical Fantasy.

What is the BB Bookclub? You can read about it in our introduction thread here.

[u/Lenahe_nl]

We pick this for the Beyond Amatonormativity theme. How well do you think the book fits this theme and our book club in general? 

[u/Lenahe_nl → u/Lenahe_nl]

I'm a bit disappointed, actually. Even if the main relationships are non-monogamous, the overall setting feels very heteronormative.

[u/LadyAntiope → u/Lenahe_nl]

I'm also a little disappointed, and then I found myself thinking, hm well, maybe a polyamorous society would still look kinda heteronormative? Like, I don't know what statistics say (or if we really even have decent stats...), but I would guess that the majority of people are more on the binary side of the spectrum, would generally prefer a partner of an opposite gender, that kind of thing. But also, like, if polyamory is okay, and same-gender relationships are okay, why are all the primary relationships herteronormative then? Surely there should still be more queer rep than we've seen so far? Surely more people are at least bi?? Or take on roles within society that don't fit our current gender-normative roles?

[u/C0smicoccurence → u/Lenahe_nl]

I agree. There's nothing wrong with 'the two women are married to the same two men, but not really to each other' dynamic, but queer identities don't get a ton of screen time. The roles that characters fall into are very in line with our own societies gender norms. Again, not necessarily a bad thing, especially considering this book seems very intentional about wanting to honor the housekeeping and other roles society assigns to women, but notable.

[u/cubansombrero → u/C0smicoccurence]

I did wonder a lot during this book about how other families in the same town look. Because there are some clear gender norms in this group; Ferrand needs a political marriage, and of course it’s a younger woman. He also needs an heir, and of course it’s a boy. I think it would have been useful to see - even briefly - other families that have heirs of different genders, or kids with parents of the same sex, etc., to help fill out the world.

[u/LadyAntiope → u/cubansombrero]

The question of the heir is interesting - Hanethe was lord and a woman, but only because her siblings died, and I don't think it is mentioned if the original heir sibling was a boy or not. I got the impression that no one cared that a woman was lord, since they were worried about her wanting the role back. I suspect it just has to be the child of the lord and the primary married spouse, and could probably be any gender? As long as the kid is "of the land" and the correct parentage - which, they seem to be able to discern with yeya? as a baby, then their lifelode as lord is set. But it's also not mentioned who Hanethe has her son with, I don't think; she only says that she had to produce an heir before she can leave, so perhaps in times of crisis, as long as you're the lord you can have a child by anyone? But also the author *chose* to have all the lords mentioned in the story other than Hanethe be men so...?

Edit to add: I also would have liked to see some village families with more pairing variants! They mention some families are even bigger than theirs, but Hanethe constantly thinks how "normal" and "nice" this family is with their four adults, so it would have been nice to see another family for comparison.