![]() ![]() As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside. "About this title" may belong to another edition of this title. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Whoever Claire North turns out to be, he or she has written a remarkable book. The pseudonymous author’s name is being kept secret, but fans of SF and fantasy authors China Mieville, Christopher Priest, and Adam Roberts might note a stylistic similarity, especially in the novel’s elegant prose. Beautifully written and structured, the book should be a big hit with SF fans. This wonderful novel, narrated by Harry, ranges back and forth in time as he recounts episodes from his various lives, but it’s all held together by a compelling mystery involving nothing less than the end of the world itself (a thousand years in the future). Harry is, like a few others, a kalachakra, an immortal who is constantly reborn, each time with all the memories of his previous lives. ![]() ![]() He is human but a different sort of human from the rest of us: he was born (in the ladies’ washroom of a train station in England in 1919), he lives a certain number of years, and he dies-and then he’s born again, right back where he started, and a handful of years later his memories of his first life return. ![]() Claire North, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. *Starred Review* Harry August isn’t human. The secret to being unafraid of the darkness is to challenge the darkness to fear you, to raise your eyes sharp to those few souls who stagger by, daring them to believe that you are not, in fact, more frightening than they are. ![]()
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