Jan 302017
 

 

Cat Webb/Claire North is angry – a good thing. She’s written this book that’s a little bit about everything – the end of the world, the world going to shit, our fears and hopes and dreams, and not a little kidnapping.

This book is a serious level up from Webb/North. It’s a little abstract, sensitive, and almost completely unputdownable and unsatisfying in the most satisfying way – you’ll want to read it again immediately.

Charlie’s new job is as Harbinger of Death. He goes ahead of Death – sometimes as a courtesy, sometimes as a warning, & makes the world a little bit better.

Jan 272017
 


What would you do if you were forgotten, fading from everyone’s memory – your parents, friends, lovers? You’d become a thief, of course, and do pretty much whatever you want. The external trappings of the world give you nothing and you give nothing back to them.

It would take something significant to get your attention and draw you in. Something like Perfection. The social network that makes you level yourself up – towards a goal of perfection. Hope loses someone to perfection, and decides to take it on.

Claire North keeps getting better. Keep your eye on her. Go buy this book

Mar 272015
 

It takes a certain chutzpah to have a first-person narrator with no name, and yet this book does. The premise: there exist beings (no spoilers) who can take over a body; they pass between them by touching flesh. They live out our lives, in moments or decades, and move on before they die.

Many of my favourite things from The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August are here: the careful attention to detail in perspective, and how it shifts through people, time, and space. North’s writing is engaging, thought-provoking, and may keep you awake at night, wondering what you’re missing.