Previous SFF Author: John Norman
(1986- )
Claire North is a pseudonym of Carnegie Medal-nominated author, Catherine Webb, who also uses the pseudonym Kate Griffin. An acclaimed author of young adult books under her own name, Catherine’s debut, Mirror Dreams, was written when she was only 14 years old, and garnered comparisons with Terry Pratchett and Philip Pullman. She read History at the London School of Economics, and studied at RADA.
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The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
I’m not sure what’s been in the air lately, but it seems I’ve been reading a lot of books this past year dealing with reincarnation/being reborn. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is yet another of those, and while it isn’t my favorite of the ones I’ve read with similar ideas (that would be either Life After Life by Kate Atkinson or The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell),
Touch, by Claire North, took me completely by surprise. I’d never heard of Claire North. (Yes, I know. More about that later.) I hadn’t seen much pre-release buzz about the book. I don’t think I’d ever read a book from (Hachette imprint) Redhook before. I frankly thought the blurb sounded a bit too standard-horror-ish, but I picked it up anyway to try a few pages and see if it could draw me in.
Am I ever glad I did.
In 17th century Venice, the young daughter of a wealthy merchant is married off to an older aristocrat wastrel who has lost his money by gambling. His habits continue after the marriage, and he is abusive, which makes her respond by becoming cold and aloof. In an attempt to provoke her, he drags her to a gameshouse, where he continues to lose his money on trivial games of chance and skill.
But she is intrigued by the exotic setting and the cosmopolitan players. She studies the games and is eventually invited to play.
I am absolutely loving Claire North’s THE GAMESHOUSE series so far. Loving it. These are short stand-alone novellas set in an alternate version of our world where an enigmatic institution called The Gameshouse works behind the scenes to influence minor and major world events. It does this by collecting and using people as “players” and “cards.” For example, The Gameshouse may offer to help a politician win a race and, in return, that politician must make himself available as a “card” when one of the players of the Gameshouse needs to use him in the future.
The Master is the third and apparently final entry in Claire North’s wonderful THE GAMESHOUSE series of novellas. These stories are about a mysterious organization called The Gameshouse where elite patrons are invited to play for very high stakes. For example, they might win a prestigious political office, or they might lose the memories of their first love. Once they become involved with the Gameshouse, they belong for life and may be called on to participate in other players’ games.
The Gameshouse by Claire North
Claire North’s The Gameshouse (2019) collects three previously-published novellas — “The Serpent,” “The Thief,” and “The Master,” each previously-reviewed by Kat — into one volume, and after years of hoping for them to be available in physical format, I’m pleased to be able to say that these three stories were well worth the wait. Kat’s reviews of the novellas are thorough and cover every salient detail prospective readers will need (no surprise there) and,
The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North
Hope Arden has an unusual problem: people forget her. It’s not that they don’t see and hear her, but that once she’s out of sight, she’s out of mind. They completely forget her and their interactions with her. This makes it impossible to have friends, colleagues, a career, and even just a job. She survives by stealing what she needs. Hope isn’t happy, but she’s doing the best she can.
Things change after Hope steals a diamond necklace at a fancy party hosted by a software company that produces a popular life-coaching app called “Perfection.” This app monitors all aspects of its users’ lives,
The End of the Day by Claire North
“I am the Harbringer of Death,” Charlie explains countless times to airport security, friends of friends, nurses, doctors, strangers in bars, passengers on trains. Because before Death, comes Charlie: sometimes as a courtesy and sometimes as a warning, but always before. Meeting people from every possible walk of life, Charlie discovers what it is to be human in The End of the Day, a genre-defying tale.
When we first meet Charlie he’s somewhere in Central America, trying to locate an old woman called Mama Sakinai.
Claire North brings a haunting and all-too-realistic vision of the near-future to life for her most recent novel, 84K (2018), in which an already-existing real world injustice is pushed to its natural limit: every possible crime and infraction are assigned a monetary value, from murder to petty theft and everything in between, and wealthy citizens escape punishment by simply paying the appropriate fine. Those who cannot pay their fine are, at best, interned in working penitentiaries known as “the patty line,” making cosmetics and frozen dinners and shiny baubles that they could never afford,
The Pursuit of William Abbey by Claire North
“I do not know whether death is mercy, or love is easy, or vengeance is peace, or if all these things are lies or truth. Or if it is the truest thing of all to say that life is all of these things, all of these truths together in perfect contradiction, blinding us to a greater truth that lies beneath.”
My husband and I are foodies. We love to try new foods, new cuisines, and new restaurants. When we order off the menu,
Ithaca by Claire North
Ithaca (2022), by Claire North, is another in a recent spate line of Greek myth retellings, with the source material here being The Odyssey and the House of Atreus storyline (Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Electra, Orestes). North greatly narrows the focus here in setting, time, and plot, lasering in what was happening at the periphery or in the gaps of those epic tales, giving voice especially though not solely to the women on the edges of those stories. It’s a wonderfully voiced, thoughtful reimagining story and a strong entry point into a new series.
House of Odysseus by Claire North
Claire North’s THE SONGS OF PENELOPE trilogy of Greek reworkings offers up three queens (Clytemnestra, Helen, and Penelope) and three goddesses (Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena). The first book, Ithaca, centered on Penelope and Clytemnestra, and was narrated by Hera in a fiercely, sharply wry voice. House of Odysseus (2023) picks up shortly after the close of book one and (wholly unnecessary spoiler alert for the old as dirt storyline) the death of Clytemnestra at her son Orestes’ hands.
Previous SFF Author: John Norman
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