The Sudden Appearance of Hope in What's the Name of That Book???

Jan 27, 2019 Wealhtheow rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy, sci-fi, pocmaincharacters

When Hope was a teenager, her little sister got deathly ill. In all the fear and effort surrounding her sister's medical treatment, Hope started getting overlooked. Not neglected, but outright forgotten. People started forgetting conversations they had with her; her teachers stopped calling on her; eventually even her parents forgot they even had an elder daughter. Without a home to stay at or any way to get support from friends, family, or the government (since within minutes of not looking at When Hope was a teenager, her little sister got deathly ill. In all the fear and effort surrounding her sister's medical treatment, Hope started getting overlooked. Not neglected, but outright forgotten. People started forgetting conversations they had with her; her teachers stopped calling on her; eventually even her parents forgot they even had an elder daughter. Without a home to stay at or any way to get support from friends, family, or the government (since within minutes of not looking at her, she was entirely forgotten), Hope became a homeless thief. Through sheer force of will and dedication learned from her parents, she saved herself from starving or going mad with loneliness, and by the start of the book has become one of the world's best and most elusive thieves.

On the eve of her latest job, one of Hope's marks kills herself. The family covers it up, but Hope is sure that a new lifestyle app called "Perfection" drove her to suicide. And so Hope not only steals what she came to steal, she does it in such an audacious way that it shames the family that owns Perfection and creates a worldwide manhunt for the mysterious thief. As clever as she is, Hope can't stay one step ahead forever...even the most forgettable woman on Earth can be caught, after all.

The first half of this book is fantastic. It had everything that I expect from a North/Griffin book: a unique, likeable but not overly sweet main character, a really cool plot hook, innovative and exciting action scenes. But after Hope had been on the run for a while I started getting a bit bored. I'm not sure exactly why, whether it was the dialog that tended toward stream-of-consciousness monologues, that there were so few characters and (due to Hope's inability to be remembered) there was so little connection between them, my sense that Perfection got way too powerful and ubiquitous way too fast, or just the number of pages devoted to this one book. And then the end felt kinda slapdash and forced, and I was left feeling quite let down. I actually forgot I finished this book because the ending was so forgettable. If there had been far less on Perfection and the trio after Hope and far more between Hope and her sister, I probably would've kept on loving this. As it was, I would've rated this book 4 stars at first and 2 stars at the last, so I've averaged it out to 3. ...more

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Apr 22, 2020 thefourthvine rated it really liked it

Shelves: sff, superheroes, supernatural, heist

Partway through this book, I realized I’ve read two other books by the author: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, which I really liked, and 84k, which was grim and hideous and tried to suck the soul out of my body. (And yet somehow I’d forgotten the name of the author. Twice. That’s very unlike me, to forget an author whose books I have an emotional reaction to. Relevant, maybe, to the subject of this book.) I knew, upon finishing those books, how I felt about them, what I thought about th Partway through this book, I realized I’ve read two other books by the author: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, which I really liked, and 84k, which was grim and hideous and tried to suck the soul out of my body. (And yet somehow I’d forgotten the name of the author. Twice. That’s very unlike me, to forget an author whose books I have an emotional reaction to. Relevant, maybe, to the subject of this book.) I knew, upon finishing those books, how I felt about them, what I thought about them. This one I’m still not sure.

This is a fascinating concept — the woman who cannot be remembered — and the book touches on a lot of things: how we define ourselves, how we choose what to do, how our circumstances change us. How people need flaws, and people need people. How society works and who it fails and why. And all of those concepts are inherently interesting. Also, there’s a ton of action in this: heists, escapes, espionage, stalking. All good things.

The book is also a surprisingly brisk read. It moves quickly, albeit episodically — you can kind of see the stitches where the different chunks were sewn together. While I was reading this, I wanted to keep reading it. Another very good thing.

But at the end of the day, I read for relationships. And Hope, by the nature of her condition/superpower, struggles with relationships. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have them, just that they’re one-sided and weird and often painful. All of that was fascinating while I was reading the book, but it’s left me with lingering bleakness on the other side.

Also, I was sort of creeped out that three categories of beings could remember Hope: pets, people with dementia, and Hope’s physically disabled little sister. Like. That’s a weird set of three, and without any explanation ever for what causes Hope to be forgotten, it feels, uh. Not cool.

And that lack of explanation is what made the book not a great fit for me. This is speculative fiction, but it doesn’t do one thing that science fiction generally does: it doesn’t explain things. There’s never an answer for why Hope is the way she is, even if there are hints. There’s no explanation for why pets and Grace, Hope’s sister, can remember her. There’s no why, just what, and for me, that’s not an ideal book.

There’s also not really an ending. I don’t want to talk too much about this for fear of spoilers, but I will say: North seems to struggle with resolution. But I think maybe that’s fine for this book, because it’s about how you make a human life, and human lives don’t generally have tidy resolutions while they’re still happening.

Basically: this book was interesting and different. It’s not something I will recommend to others, but it is something I’m glad I read. ...more

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