He is a master of deceit, posing as reporter, scientist, professor, doctor, groundskeeper, and whatever role is necessary. Through the course of his lives, Harry becomes an accomplished liar, protecting himself and his identity not just from linears (people who don't remember their prior lives) but from others among the Kalachakra (those who do remember) as well. I think if my flat had been on fire, I'd have taken the book with me to read while we awaited the fire trucks. And what an experience it is! Author Claire North twists the tension from the very start, first with small clues and upsets which build along with the story until the last few chapters where I was exclaiming expletives aloud to the room at large as I went. Harry is the only point-of-view character, so that we experience everything through his senses. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is a brilliant twist on the time-travel trope, set in what becomes an alternative historical setting, with multiple speculative elements, all blended in literary style. But this time, a young girl visits his bedside and asks him to take a message with him. No matter how he lives his life, world events unfold around him in the exact same way. Every life, he's reborn in the same year, at the same place, by the same mother, with all his prior memories intact. Harry August is dying for the eleventh time.
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