The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Ratings288
Average rating4
Fantastic summer read. Clever, engaging, funny, a bit thought provoking, within a science fiction (sort of) world. I listened to it on audible ... Excellent performance.
Ik ben de eerste die van mooi in elkaar gevlochten verhalen (denk David Mitchell) of verrassende plotconstructies (denk Kate Atkinson) houdt, dus de premisse van dit boek leek wel wat. Maar meer dan “wel aardig” werd het niet, meer een thriller met een beetje vreemd uitgangspunt.
What a standout book. I loved it.
Harry August was born on 1st of January 1919 in the women's rest room of a railway station in the north of England. He lived an unremarkable life and died age 70. Whereupon he was born on 1st of January 1919 in the same women's rest room. Three years later he started to get memories of his first life and by age 6 he remembered everything. Speaking of such things won him no friends and he was 'put away' in an asylum where he died, whereupon he was born on 1st of January 1919 in the women's rest room of a railway station in the north of England. But this time young Harry knew not to speak of remembering each of his earlier lives.
So what would you do if you kept on being born into the same place and remembered everything from all your past lives with the foreknowledge to make better/different decisions? Kill Hitler before you turned 20? (spoiler: he didn't) It's a time travel story with a difference. And a totally captivating read of friendship, deception and betrayal.
What a great reinvention of the idea of time travel. Nice short and frequent chapters.
This is a fantastic book. So well written. So thoughtful, so interesting. Deals with important concepts through a useful and engaging lens.
When people say that a book changed them, I never really understood what they meant. Until I read this book. As someone who contemplates existence on their free time, this book was perfect for me. It made me really think into the meaning and psychics in life and the universe.
The characters were amazing and felt so real. Especially the protagonist. I even found myself liking the villain sometimes. The relationship between the protagonist and the villain was so unique. Even though it was different, it still made sense.
Overall, I loved how innovative the story and its characters were. Not only was the world building and characters so real, but the progression of the story was so genuine. Everything made sense.
New spin on a classical plot tool. I had fun reading it and it is well written.
This should have been great and was just okay. I really like the kalachakra ‘Replay” aspect of it and just did not care for the cat and mouse game, which felt like a mediocre spy novel.
Great pacing until Russia where, for me, it felt a little slow but picks up again after that.
A lot darker than I thought it would be! But still a very good story, well written (if at times a bit confusing... but I guess it was to be expected with all the lives...)
A lot darker than I thought it would be! But still a very good story, well written (if at times a bit confusing... but I guess it was to be expected with all the lives...)
I thought this was a fun spin on a time travel novel. In some ways it reminded me of Asimov's “End of eternity” though the mechanics of time travel in both are very different.
Passionnant j'ai eu énormément de mal à le lâcher tellement le livre était haletant. Un duel à travers de multiples vies qui au final tient plus du policier par son rythme que de la science fiction par sa trame de départ.
This novel was on my radar because I heard Regan of peruseproject talk about it in one of her videos on Youtube.
I was really excited to start reading this. I skimmed over some of the reviews and was immediately a little worried because there were some mixed feelings for it.
The story started out strong, was slow in the middle, and then got strong again at the end. I felt like the middle was slow because we were going through Harry's different lives, and not even in chronological order. I understand that it was vital in understand how the end occurred. In the moment of reading the middle, it was just very slow.
I absolutely loved the story though. It was such an interesting concept of life and death, what comes after. It has been something I have been thinking about a lot recently, which had me a little worried about reading it at first.
Ni Stephen King escribe finales tan malos. Es una verdadera lastima porque es una novela que disfruté mucho, pero que termina de forma precipitada y vergonzosa. No hay derecho a jugar así con el lector, a llevarlo por un viaje increíble con un destino que no está a la altura de nada.
La narrativa de Claire (o como se llame) es increíble.
Executive Summary: This is another one of those books where I seem to be in the minority of my friends. The premise sounded excellent, but I struggled with the first half. It finished stronger than it started, saving it from a 2 star rating, albeit barely: 2.5 stars.
Full Review
The book was well written. The concept of reliving your life over and over again with all of your memories was fantastic. However the execution of the story just left me unengaged.
I'm not sure what I expected this book to be exactly, but it definitely had a different tone than I was looking for. It's starts off on such a bleak note for me that I think it instantly put me off it completely.
I'm stubborn though so I pushed through for awhile until I got to 40% mark and then I just ignored it for about a month. Instead of moving on to another book, I just didn't read at all. I finally decided to push through the final 60% over the long holiday weekend and I guess I'm glad I did.
I thought the ending was a lot better than the beginning. Maybe all that time away allowed me to reset and come in with proper expectations. I'm not really sure. Either way, I'm happy to be done with this book, and I probably won't pick up another by Claire North moving forward.
A grudging 4 stars. While the writing is splendid and the plot is fairly interesting, I found this tedious in parts and definitely a tad too long.
Only 3 stars from me for this one... can't seem to figure out why! Great writing, intriguing story, interesting main character... just didn't connect for some reason. 🤷🏼♀️🤷🏼♀️🤷🏼♀️
I bought this book some six months ago. For some reason I didn't read it right away (well I do have a huge TBR pile). That was a mistake of sorts as it turns out that I quite loved TFFLoHA.
What is it about? Well I'll not give anything important that you cannot get from the book blurbs, but it is a most peculiar time travel story. Think Ground Hog Day (the movie) writ very large. Not just one day, but a whole life over and over. Claire North has thought about it very deeply and a very good story has resulted.
A very tedious and drawn out reading experience. This book is really repetitive in style. The main protagonist is Harry August who keeps repeating his life from birth to death over centuries. The descriptions of Harry's alternative lives were rather anecdotal and pointless and made the book far too long. Arguably this book could have lost 200 pages and it wouldn't have effected the narrative. The structure of Harry's storyline is rather flimsy and loose. The relationship between Harry and his frenemy Vincent is also rather odd and the suggestion of a homoerotic tension between the two was rather off the mark for me. I really didn't enjoy the reading experience of this book and found finishing this book a chore. I was rather relieved to finally see the back of this book. A disappointing 1.5/2 out of 5 stars.
foarte interesantă ideea, și destul de originală.
Foarte captivantă primele 200 de pagini, după care își cam pierde suflul și variază între doar captivantă și plictisitoare pe alocuri. mai lungă decât ar fi fost cazul pentru povestea oferită.
Am apreciat foarte tare referințele dese și corecte la WW2, dar m-am amuzat/enervat la naivitățile privind URSS/China Roșie -văd că occidentalii nu reușesc să înțeleagă cât de închistate și paranoice au fost (un ex. Harry intră ca spion în URSS, cu acte false - de fapt ar fi fost deja urmărit constant de la graniță, asta dacă nu-l săltau din start - ajunge liniștit în Siberia, la o șarașka, și intră în ea fără probleme. LOL...)
Per ansamblu, o carte bună spre foarte bună, care merită citită, dar ar fi putut fi mai bună de atât la potențialul ideii.
This was a bit like the movie Groundhog Day, but instead looping through a single day, Harry loops through full lives. He is born in the early 1900s and when he dies, he's reborn back in the early 1900s with his previous memories intact.
The book begins in England in the early 1900s and follows Harry's lives throughout Europe, Asia, and North America through the entire 20th century. The only “magic” in the world is that a small percentage of humanity relives their lives over and over again.
All around the globe and throughout time, the Cronus Club recruits people like Harry. They often seek each other out as children and help them jumpstart their lives with wealth and new identities. North takes this concept and does some really cool things with it. For example, Harry could seek out someone like himself in the early 1900s who is nearing the end of their loop and pass on information for their next life. This cycle allows information to be passed forward or backward in time.
The people like Harry are nearly immortal, but can still be killed. For some reason, killing someone's parents before they are born (or otherwise preventing their birth) will kill one of them forever. Extreme torture during one life can leave a person mentally broken in the next, and it's possible to erase one's memories of their past lives.
Harry August is the main character of the novel, and we meet a good number of people through his eyes. The thing is, each one of his lives is different, and side characters don't always show up in multiple lives. There are a couple repeat characters (some more important than others), but to talk too much about them would get into spoilers.
I will say that this story has one of my absolute favorite types of villains. They believe they are truly the “good guy” and I was honestly pretty close to rooting for them by the end. Rather than good vs. evil, the main conflict is more of a matter of ideals.
Harry's first life is relatively normal. He experiences pain and joy, hardships and triumphs, and then dies. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself right back where he started.
It takes him a while before he adjusts to the idea, and longer still before he finds out there are others like him. He explores religion, philosophy, academia, and crime. One day, towards the end of his eleventh life, someone like him passes on a message from the future: the world is ending, and the end is occurring sooner with every life cycle.
From that point on, Harry is determined to try to stop the end of the world. Events from earlier in the book that didn't seem to have much purpose come back with new meaning and a game of cat and mouse begins between Harry and his enemy.
Claire North has a knack for combining beautiful prose, complex characters, creative ideas, and never wasting a word. Rather than centering her story around magic, she focuses on the human elements of her world. This can lead to a slice-of-life, slower-paced feel at times, but the story gradually builds in intensity and suspense.
The plot is nonlinear, jumping around between Harry's various lives, but this nonlinearity was chosen with care and adds to the story. I typically find magical realism stories to be too slow for my liking, but this story has excellent pacing that accelerates in the later parts of the book.
If you like books that explore the consequences of a character's actions, have nonlinear timelines and rely more on intrigue and mystery than on action, this might be for you. Good and evil aren't black and white, either.
If you prefer action-heavy, fast-paced, happy books, this might not be for you. The book takes its time getting started (though the pace definitely does pick up), and it might feel like its rambling. There is a relatively small cast of developed characters, with most of the attention being directed at Harry.
Esta Persecución del gato y el ratón a través de las eras y el tiempo en innumerables vidas y épocas, está tan bien escrito que te mantiene pasando paginas sin parar, los conceptos “complejos” están explicados en fácil y sin perder el ritmo de la narrativa para ir pasando de un capitulo a otro sin detenerse.
Muy recomendado para todos.