The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

This is the third book I've read from this author and I believe her debut novel, so I went into it expecting the same tone and discourse I came to love in The Sudden Appearance of Hope and on Touch, but maybe a little less developed. It was just as wonderful as her other more recent works. I think what I love so much about the voice of this author and her characters is the contemplation of what makes us human, what the purpose of existence is. There is so much dialog in all of her books about morals and the effects that consequence have on the psyche and the conversation that takes place with the darker self when consequence is removed. In this story, what is the consequence of being a murderer if you can just off yourself if you get caught and start over again? In Hope, if you can just hide for a few moments and all the witnesses forget they saw you? In Touch, if you can just become a new person and flee the scene through passing consciousness? These are the questions that this author brings to the table and discusses with much thought and consideration to the human condition. I find myself lost in her realities and trying to find my own purpose and existence in her characters who are at once moral and immoral, good and evil, human and other. There exists in all of us some of these traits and it is the balance, the dance, between all our faces and sides that makes us human and that is captured so eloquently by this author. 5/5 recommends

I have a feeling that when this book was first drafted, it was probably around 700 pages. I imagine it annoyed the author to no end to have to shave this story down to 417 pages, but good LORD is there a lot going on here.While I didn't exactly identify with (or even really like) Harry August, I loved his story. I kept going back and forth between thinking the Kalachakra were incredibly lucky to be able to re-live their lives over and over in different ways, visiting exotic places and meeting new people in each life, or cursed to be forced to live in the same time frame with the same events happening in their lives for infinity. In the end, I'm leaning more towards cursed...While I loved the overall story, it does get a bit wordy in places. Harry's time in Russia is a particularly dry period, but necessary to set up the ending. The finer details and intricacies of the story are extremely well done, and I thought the ending was satisfactory (if a wee bit abrupt). Even though Harry is a distant and apathetic character (which makes perfect sense given his situation), I was sad to part ways with him when the book was finishedOverall, I'm so glad I finally read this. It's been on my TBR list for years, and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone interested.

This book was...not good. I stuck with it because I have a hard time ever putting down a book I've started, but there were sections of this book that were just eye-rollingly ridiculous.I think the author may have thought she was creating tension for the "main" storyline by jumping around in timelines/lives between chapters, or somehow adding to the characterization of Harry by sharing these glimpses into other lives and experiences, but none of them were developed enough to be anything more than distracting filler. It didn't advance the understanding of Harry, and for the most part weren't long or detailed enough to illuminate anything about how he really lived and interacted with the world. The writing style didn't work for me either - it was both pretentious and obtuse. The short sentences I think were supposed to be meaningful call backs to other lives, but just seemed silly. There were times she seemed in love with her own sentences, but they just didn't land for me. I could almost hear her congratulating herself for her own cleverness, but it didn't work for me.More than the writing and poor characterization, the biggest problem I had was the "science". It takes forever for the main problem of the book to develop - you're floating around between lives for half of the book while Harry goes around doing nothing until you start to realize his foil will be the student/intellectual debater that does actually want to do something. But this idea of the <spoiler>quantum mirror</spoiler> is so poorly defined - it just doesn't make sense. It's briefly outlined that this device is supposed to <spoiler>enable them to deduce the underpinnings of all matter by observing forces around an atom and therefore see all things, past and future, just as we can infer that an apple falling from a tree indicates gravity</spoiler>. That's pretty much the only explanation you get, and to say the reasoning oversimplifies and makes some logical leaps is an understatement. That's not my biggest problem - it's a problem, but you can get over it with a willing suspension of disbelief by telling yourself this isn't a book about quantum science - my biggest problem is how Harry interacts with this, and how it compels him to act. <spoiler>He spends 10 years of one life supporting the pursuit of this goal, for reasons that are only partially described, and then after seeing that Vincent doesn't really care about the means to his end, believing that these linear lives don't matter in the present, because they're only going to restart for him again later anyway, changes his mind.</spoiler> I had to keep going back to that section over and over to remind myself why Harry was doing any of what he did in the later part of the book - it was that thinly described, and we knew that little about what motivates him.Further, parts of the premise that spur Harry's action were just confusing to me. It stands to reason that if your life starts over when you die, regardless of the timeline of others, you should always be there. For example - if you are born in 1920, die in 1945 in that life, you would not be around in 1955 in that timeline. But, based on this premise, you are reborn again in 1920. Presuming you make different choices in this life, when 1945 rolls around again and you don't die, you are still around in 1955 - so at least one version of you would always be persistent. This was a problem for me, as logically it would then follow that there are more and more versions of Harry and the other kalachakras out there in the world at any one point, if we're to believe they start over but the world continues. That took me out of the story even further, and negated Harry's "ah-ha" moment when <spoiler>the Leningrad Cronus Club and its keeper were destroyed. I couldn't help but think, shouldn't she have restarted and by this time be an adult again? Just go look her up.</spoiler>. At what point do things reset? There aren't a ton of little Harry kids running around, so does the world restart just for him? Does dying erase just you? We're given to believe the world goes on without Harry in it, so at what point do things really reset? It would have to be resetting all the time given there's more than one kalachakra. How different is the world for all of them? The author briefly brings up parallel universes, such that each life is a spin out into a new universe - the kalachakras just remember their previous universe lives (which I think would have made a lot more sense and been more compelling), but this is pretty quickly dismissed, since we also have to believe in a single world/universe for the "messages through time" convention to work. Maybe I'm looking too deeply, but too much of the story relies on this not to have given it more than a passing reference.Overall, I think it's an interesting premise, but just didn't come together, the science didn't make sense, and the characters were too thinly drawn to be compelling.

I loved this book. It is so well written, with such fantastically developed characters. The science is also interesting as well as the mix of philosophy.Harry August is born in 1919 ... again and again, same birth, same circumstances. But he lives a different life every time, deciding to solve an apocalyptic mystery and save the world. BRILLIANT!

Harry August has a pretty ordinary life. He is born in Berwick-upon-Tweed in 1919 and dies in a hospital in Newcastle in 1989. In the meantime he has different jobs, various relationships and tries to move on from his difficult family life. But when he dies he finds himself as a child again, regaining his memories of his prior life. This happens again. And again.Harry is an Ouroboran, destined to live his life again and again. He is one of hundreds, and through the overlapping lifespans of Ouroborans it is possible to send and receive messages from the distant past and distant future. But, in Harry's eleventh life, the messages from the future start changing: the world is ending, and it is accelerating. When Harry's fellow Ouroborans start permanently dying (by someone assassinating their parents before they conceived) or having their memories wiped, and amazing technology appears decades early, he realises that one of their number has betrayed them and is using their power for their own ends, with destructive consequences for humanity.The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August was released in 2014 and won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, as well as being nominated for the Arthur C. Clark Award. It gained surprising widespread prominence after being featured on the UK's biggest TV book show. It is written by Catherine Webb under the pseudonym Claire North, which she uses to explore protagonists with unusual abilities (The Sudden Appearance of Hope is in a similar vein).Webb is a constantly intriguing and interesting author, shifting genres and prose styles with enviable ease as she explores different ideas and characters. At her best, she comes across as a restless, far more prolific and slightly less repetitive (but also somewhat more wordy) Christopher Priest, with her books dwelling on themes such as identity and motivation amongst shifting realities and points of view.The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August may be her finest novel to date. The central premise is incredibly strong and it deals with the existential questions surrounding the idea in surprising depth and with logic. Questions are raised such as if the Ouroborans are living in the same world, changing it each time they live through it, or if they are skipping from one timeline to another, and the moral consequences of that for the timelines they leave behind upon death. The overlapping lifespans of different Ouroborans allow them to bring back knowledge from the distant future (since an Ouroboran born in say 1984 dies in the late 21st Century, is reborn, reveals that information to another one who was born in 1925, who can pass it back in their next life etc) and this raises moral quandaries about if they should hoard their knowledge or try to improve humanity's lot.This latter question consumes much of the novel, especially when it becomes clear that trying to change things often results in far worse consequences. But the dry time travel shenanigans are contrasted against Harry's characterisation, especially the trauma he carries from his first life and his intriguing relationship with a sometimes-nemesis Vincent. The path of the Ouroboran can be a lonely, frustrating one and Harry's dislike of Vincent for his relaxed morality is tempered with respect for his intelligence and just the company of a fellow travel on a journey through their looping lives. This relationship forms the core of the novel and is developed with relish by the author.The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (*****) is a smart and thoughtful reflection on life, love, loss, identity, science and the end of the world.

Takes one to know one, they say. Well clearly Miss North has to be a mnemonic, for imagination doesn’t stretch so far and wide for one young life to conjure, does it?This tale is ravishing, opulent with detail, coercive in promise and utterly compelling.Yes the story is protracted, necessarily so to validate the protagonist’s rationale, but in fact massively condensed actually, considering the eight hundred years it took to play out.It has a narrative which jumps timelines back and forth like a sparking intermittent current between electrodes, an adroit craft that demands you concentrate.The research put in has been vast, the human observation and its depiction exemplary. I felt every angst and frustration, envied Harry’s patience and flinched at the pain he was forced to endureApart from the obvious thrills of being able to go back and do it all again, and again, and becoming utterly blasé about the encumbrance of dying, there are some dark horrors addressed in here, gruesome and heinous acts, crimes against natural order and its consequences, but there is also enlightenment, knowledge and plenty of joy to pressed into the pages.I think Claire North has excelled in writing from a male persona, and mastered the consciousness of an octocentenarian’s psyche convincingly. Although being male and having the ability to go back and correct one’s mistakes, perhaps these memoirs would have been a trifle more rampant than has been alluded to.I urge you to read this novel; it’s a very bumper book channelled from a very brilliant mind.

Mind blowing reworking of past life premise, Claire North (yes I do know it's her pen name) has written a pearl of a book here. In a nut shell, there is a hidden group of people who when they die, are reborn with their conscious mind and all their memories from ALL previous lives intact. Obviously, the second time they realise at age 3 -5 that they are reliving their lives in their original bodies tends to send them a bit potty (think de ja vu but constant and permanent) and they either go insane and get committed (bad move pre 21st Century) or just take a personally implemented dirt nap. This is where a group called the Cronus Club, if and until they are aware of you, step in to explain and assist (I'm trying not to River Song people here). Then, as our hero Harry goes about his many existences, it turns out that a message is relayed from the future (and its a really clever game of leapfrog suggested here) where the end of humanity is not just arriving but getting faster with each lifetime led in the future (again, no spoilers) and Harry is in a position by luck or judgement to get to the root of it and stop it. This book fully deserves five stars and does not pull any punches in explaining the theories behind the past life concept, scientific principles or moral dilemmas involving Harry August and I salute Ms North for recognising that her readership don't always need to be babysat through the text where it gets technical or assume her readership needs to be guided like simpletons. This is (and I've said this in other reviews as confirmation of writing principles in my opinion) a brilliant yarn, written with intelligence, care and attention to detail and I can almost smell a movie deal in there. Given some of the half baked rubbish that passes for reading matter out there, this is not just a breath of fresh air, its a Tornado of Triumph.

What an astonishing book! Harry August is born, lives an unremarkable life, and dies. Then he is born again - in the same circumstances, but as he grows from infancy to childhood he remembers all of his previous life. At first it drives him mad, but he finds that suicide doesn't stop the repeat. So he gets used to it, prospers much better at school, is able to make better decisions about his life, and knows how to stay out of danger during service in the Second World War.Then news comes back from the future, passed from a child who remembers the future to someone elderly, who can pass it on when they are reborn, that the progress of history is being interfered with and the end of the world is coming. Through the lives that follow, Harry sets out to find out who is passing on technology before its time, and work out how to stop them. I was transfixed. Highly recommended.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August tells the story of Harry; born in a public bathroom at a train station in north east England in the early 1900's. Harry lives a fairly uneventful life and ultimately dies in old age. But then Harry is born again... in exactly the same place, to exactly the same parents and with all the memories of his first life. Unsure of what he is and unable to cope with what it means, he ends his life, age 7. And so, Harry is born again. Harry soon finds out that he is a very special type of person and seeks out others of his kind.The first 70% (approximately 13 lives!) of this book is so very, very long and quite boring. Not a lot happens and it is very word heavy. There is very limited dialogue up to this point and it makes for tough reading. But if you can make it this far without giving up, the last 30% actually picks up pace and is quite enjoyable.The book jumps about between Harry's lives, reliving his experiences to explain how they help him in his current life. This makes it a little hard to follow at times; it feels like it's trying to be too clever. I'm not sure if I would've preferred to have read Harry's lives in chronological order or not?!Another subject this book tackles is that of time travel. The book suggests that there are events in history that have to happen in order for the world to exist as it does. For example, the question of killing Hitler comes up and is deemed to be one of those things that has to happen. And yet, Harry repeatedly disposes of a man before he can harm women after witnessing him murdering prostitutes in one life. This didn't quite add up for me.The idea of this book is really interesting and Harry August is a good book. Based on the first 70% of this book, I'd give it 2 stars but the last 30% has bumped it up to 3 stars for me.