North, Claire. The First 15 Lives of Harry August. New York: Knopf 2021. Print.
The second cataclysm began in my eleventh life, in 1996. I was dying my usual death, slipping away in a warm morphine haze, when she interrupted my like an ice cube down my spine. She was seven. I was seventy-eight.
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Descriptions:
Barry, Max. The 22 Murders of Madison May. New York: Putnam 2021. Print.
First Sentences:
She pulled to the curb and peered through her car window at the house she had to sell.The mailbox was lying across the lawn in pieces, as if someone had taken a baseball bat to it....The house was a dump. The mailbox had been one of the best things about it.
These two books of realistic Science Fiction/Fantasy, are dizzingly challenging due to their similar, unusual premise: "What if you could live forever, but there were certain catches?" To be sure, these turn out to be awkward catches, both mental and physical, that might hinder what could be anticipated by many people to be a dream existence.
In Claire North's The First 15 Lives of Harry August, the protagonist, Harry August, can live a normal life of being born, going to school, suffering illnesses, experiencing adulthood, and even dying of natural or unnatural causes. The catch? After dying, he is immediately reborn to the exact same life as he just lived: on the same exact date, under the same circumstances, to the same parents in the same location. He then has to live the same life (which he can modify by making different decisions), through old age or die earlier by other means.
Then he will start his life all over again...and again... and again.
The double catch for August is that he retains every memory from all his previous lives, all intelligence, skills, and knowledge. Football score memories and carefully-placed horse-racing bets help finance his lives.
He has to knowingly live each life through toddlerhood, elementary schooling, and the other dubious events of childhood over and over. But by age six, he usually understands his fate and attempts to re-shape his newest life, pursuing different professions and education, obtaining different friends, and making better -- or at least different -- choices.
Unfortunately, he also has come to realize there are several other people like him with this "gift." These people use their unique lives to try to create a better world ... or to rule it. As August comes in contact with these people, for better or worse, his many lives take on challenging, often life-threatening directions.
It's a fascinating concept: eternal life with catches and evil attached. But author North weaves a believable, fantastic, unpredictable tale of addressing the question of what to do if you knew you would continually be reborn and face the same people, events, and environment over and over.
On the other hand, one of my favorite authors, Max Barry (Machine Man) has created a similarly-theme novel of extendable life in his The 22 Murders of Madison May. In the opening scene, a real estate agent named Madison May is murdered by a potential buyer of a run-down house she is trying to sell. A reporter, Felicity Staple, covering the crime, is accidently pulled by an unfamiliar person into a parallel world that seemingly mirrors the same environment as she currently lives in...but is slightly altered. For example, while she remains the same person, her apartment is now redecorated and occupied by a different male (boyfriend? husband?. Of course, she has to react to this new situation and adapt to this almost familiar world and its people.
Then she discovers another murder of a woman named Madison May. Felicity now understands that not only can she can jump into parallel worlds, but in each one there are seemingly random killings of women of a certain name occur. She resolves to find and then pursue
the murderer to whichever world he jumps to and
hopefully stop his killings.
But she must jump to another world at exactly the right time. If she misses the small timeframe to move to another world, Felicity risks being trapped forever in a life different from her original one.
Confused yet? Wouldn't blame you if you were. But my descriptions do neither book real justice. Your immersion into the actual writing, characters, and plot of these books will reward you with a unique experience, guaranteed. You can't go wrong with either if you want challenging concepts, unusual situations, and unpredictable action.
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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
Berry, Max. Machine Man.
An engineer in the near future has his leg crushed in an industrial accident, so designs a prosthetic leg for himself that is far superior to his original one of flesh. Of course, he soon decides to destroy and replace his other "inefficient" leg (as well as eventually other body parts) to gradually build himself into a superior man/machine. But what are the consequences for himself and his world? (previously reviewed here)
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