The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

Wow! What a novel! Like Notes from the Burning Age, Claire North builds a story with emotional depth and super compelling ideas using language that is both straight-forward and lyrical.

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I asked if it was hard, being the first woman in her department. She laughed and said that only idiots judged her for being a woman – and she judged them for being idiots.

“The benefit being,” she explained, “that I can be both a woman and a fucking brilliant surgeon, but they’ll always only be idiots.”

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The premise is that there are certain people who, once they die, are born again in the same time and place: a bit like Groundhog Day, but with more nuance. For centuries these special individuals assume they can’t really change the course of history nor how quickly things progress, but one man begins to do it purposefully to further his ambition of making a God-machine, thereby endangering the entire planet.

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The story covers ground from the 1890s to the 1990s, from Bangkok to Leeds, and includes only a handful of people, but each one very well defined.

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The vegetation around the sprawling, overgrown estate hung down like it too could no longer bear the heat, while an air-conditioning system straight off the manufacturing line was blasting out steamy clouds from a device the size of a small truck, wedged up against one side of the otherwise venerable property like a technological leech on a historical monument.

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This novel, which is 450 pages, felt long when I was in the middle of it, as if the energy was flagging a bit. But from about three quarters of the way in to the end, the tension builds and builds to a spectacular ending. A quote on the front says this novel is “gripping” and it really is.

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A tick tick tick of the grandfather clock in the hall. Soon sirens would sound, and stop, and the city would listen for the low drone of the bombers, the deep clearing of death’s throat as he prepared to sing.

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This story is about the friendship between two unique men and the curiosity, love, and desire for vengeance that cause them to make unbearable decisions.

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