A fascinating twist on Groundhog Day ...

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I stand in absolute awe not only of Claire North's creative powers, but also the intellect required to write a book like this!
The eponymous Harry August is a kalachakra, an ouroboran - an immortal, doomed to live the same life, in the same timeline, over and over again. He is also a mnemonic, able to remember every detail of every one of his lives with all their minor variations and different personal decisions, leading to different careers, relationships and times and places of death. He is born in 1919, and experiences the events of the 20th century variously as a humble groundsman, an academic, a historian, a scientist, a businessman, an entrepreneur, a criminal mastermind ... take your pick. But he remembers everything.
He's not the only one of his kind, though mnemonics are apparently rare ... there exists, and has existed since ancient times, an institution known at the Cronos Club, which seeks to ease the path of ouroborans though the Groundhog Day of their many lives, offering support through the confusion of childhood, rescue in times of crisis, and passing chain messages into the future from older to younger members, and back into the past from younger to older.
Thus it is that on one of his deathbeds, Harry receives a 'cataclysm' - a message passed down from future generations - to the effect that the catastrophe that precipitates the end of the world is occurring earlier and earlier in time. The only possible explanation, in the opinion of the Cronos Club, is that one of their own has been indulging in forbidden activity - changing the established course of events.
It becomes Harry's task to hunt down and eliminate the culprit - no easy task when one is dealing with an immortal, whose massive intellect and perfect recall are a match for Harry's own.
It's all incredibly complicated, with fifteen lives narrated in no particular order - like putting together a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. But boy, is it worth sticking with to the end!
A truly gripping read, and thoroughly recommended.



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