Review Summaries

• 政治的・科学的な設定を前面に出し、ジャンル小説としての推進力と思想性を両立させている。題材の濃さを好む読者に向く。

Reviews

• Flawless

  I can understand that some readers had problems with the style - I'm not normally much into 'arty' writing myself. But here it worked perfectly for me, the unfinished sentences and fugue-like repetitions reflecting the confused and uncertain people trying to do something that matters. It's a heartbreaking, dystopian world that I found far too convincing for comfort, but it's described without drama or sentimentality and there's an understated, dry kind of humour that I really liked. It's kind of hard for me to review this book since I don't know how to describe it, but I loved both the story and the language and would absolutely recommend it.

• Truly Phenomenal!! DO NOT MISS OUT ON THIS AUTHOR!!!

  I discovered Claire North quite by chance as a recommendation on my Kindle about a year ago, reading "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August." Having just finished "84K", I now have read her entire body of work and cannot wait for her next release! I am not going to be able to do this justice; every novel deserves comments on Ms. North's amazingly imaginative characters and development of circumstances, dialog, resolution of mind-bending dilemmas - she is utterly amazing!! How does one "imagine" a person with the "gift/curse" of invisibility that no one can remember her mere moments after meeting her - "The Sudden Appearance of Hope"???? Typically, I would look to understand or "explain" true brilliance of an author by academic credentials, perhaps a life style absorbed in literature, or surrounded by literary personalities; Ms. North, as everyone knows by now, is a lighting designer for the London theater; perhaps viewing theater productions are a intimate pathway to a remarkable invention of people and what would be surreal, yet totally within the realm of realism??? Please read a review, or two - you would laugh out loud at Ms. North's perspective on how she achieves the creativity she does! Am I enamored with this author??? Without a doubt - absolutely love that she is a VERY young lady, with decades of career ahead of her!

• Another masterpiece of heart and genius, this one dark and sad, not an easy read but very rewarding.

  5-Stars (see my full review at GoodReads) Another masterpiece of heart and genius, this one dark and sad, not an easy read but very rewarding. North creates a living, plausible, even probable world in which greed has triumphed. Everything has a price, every crime a monetary indemnity. The rich can do what they wish, and escape with only a fine. Even murder is excused for £84,000, more or less. This story of the near future is a clear warning about the 1,000 year Tory dream: Lords in the castles and the rest of us dead or naked in the fields. ... the Prime Minister declared, “Too long our enemies have hidden behind human rights as if they were extended to all!” North's prose carries you into this world, a stream-of-consciousness almost from "the one called Theo" now. She builds her dystopian vision, confusing at first, slowly knitting the threads together, and the poetry of this terrible new world seeps into you, into your heart. Small miracles, tiny fragments of kindness resisting the cruel greed of the Company, straining to be human, to care. No one does this kind of world-building better than Claire North. There are two main threads of the story: the present and the past of 15 years ago, near the beginning of the takeover by the rich. Poor Theo is not a hero, just a boy and just a man. North switches the two threads mostly by alternating chapters, and weaving them ever closer together. This is a brilliant mystery as well, two murders, many deaths and a kidnap. Theo and Niela, Theo and Dani, Theo and the two bullies, Theo and Lucy, Theo and Theo. Each relationship guides Theo from the past to the present, and into a terrible solution, but with ever-present hope and tenderness from some strangers. A future home for your grandchildren? Full size image No one admitted that the enclaves held the bin men, cleaners, waiters, janitors, porters, shelf-stackers, carers who wiped the old women’s bums, bus drivers and health assistants too skint to afford anywhere else. Everyone has to make a choice, the Company said. You have to choose success. This dystopia is so close to today that you can feel it's breath in the room with you as you read. Such beautiful prose, despairing and knowing, and we have hope, we seek hope in Theo and Neila and the lost, seek refuge from the bullies and the rich and their easily hired thugs. Even the assassin kills someone. Then as she stands over the body, calls the police on herself, knowing she'll just pay a fine. Or rather, her bosses will. Almost like it is today. So close. There was only one school in Shawford by Budgetfood. Once a year the mayor came to judge sports day, and they’d get special guest speakers from the factory to talk about Retail Branding for Social Media or Fish Waste Product Use. Much of the story is with Neila along the Grand Union Canal. It ... was finished just in time for the railways to be invented. Full size image A narrowboat like Neila's Full size image Her husband dies, leaving her and her young son alone: But her benefits had been stopped because she was fit for work (though no one would hire her) and if no one would hire her in Shawford she just had to look elsewhere (there was nowhere to go) The triumph of jungle capitalism: ... says this country is a slave state. That there aren’t any chains on our feet or beatings on our backs because there don’t need to be. Cos if you don’t play along with what the Company wants, you die. You die cos you can’t pay for the doctor to treat you. You die cos the police won’t come without insurance. Cos the fire brigade doesn’t cover your area, cos you can’t get a job, cos you can’t buy the food, cos the water stopped, cos there was no light at night and if that’s not slavery, if that’s not the world gone mad... There are rules and penalties for every transgression, and new rules invented every day to bleed the population on behalf of the mental illness of the greed of the rich. And the long lonely night, the ache of constant fear, barely lifted by a friend: Theo said, staring into flames, “There’s a place where the words stop. She did this and it was . . . and then we stop. It was terrible. It was barbaric. It was beautiful. You understand. And we do. We know. Our lives exist in many different, contradictory states, all at once. I am a liar. I am a killer. I am honest. I am fighting for a good cause. I am burning the world. We want things simple, and safe, and when they aren’t, when the truth is something complicated, something hard, or scary, we stop. The words run out. Everything becomes . . . ” Sound died on his lips. A dead place where he once thought he had the answers and where now he isn’t so sure. The poverty and fear drives many insane... They’ve got this guy, this boss bloke, he goes to the sea every morning and rages at it. Just rages at it, cos of how he was born into this shit, and he didn’t ever find no way to make his life good, and he rages at the sky cos it never helped him, and at the earth cos it never carried him somewhere else, and his raging it’s . . . it’s sorta good, you know? It’s like going to church, only different like. Sometimes I scream, it’s like praying, but different. This passage straight from Ms. North's heart, her mission: But caring isn’t the same as doing something, and doing something is hard. It’s very, very hard. But the Company is made of people, and people are weak. They are cowards, like the rest of us. They wear a nicer suit. I’m going to destroy them all, one at a time, until there is nothing left, and the cities can burn and the sea can turn red with blood, and when it’s done I will make a better world for my daughter.” Thought through those words, looking to see if there was anything wrong with them. Couldn’t see it. “That’s all.” "In tarot, the Fool begins the journey. With an innocent heart and a soul full of wonder he sets out on his wanderings, looking to explore the universe, delighting in all things, trusting in all things the Fool is a card of exploration, hope." -- My view: GREED is truly the most terrible challenge of our times, and capitalism is its tool, its means to power and more greed. Greed is a (contagious) mental illness, an unfillable hole, a hunger that denies justice, a brutal expression of broken egos. Greed is having a million times as much as the poor and still feeling you don't have enough. Greed consumes the earth without respite, and is a cancer on humanity. Greed destroys us and our children and their future. Greed is death.

• Bleak and brilliant.

  Portraying a dystopian future that could easily lie ahead, Claire North creates a story about the dissolved bonds between us that carries a reader forward with ever growing momentum. Hard to put down and deeply impactful.

• Another fine novel

  Claire North succeeds in surprising me very time I read another of her compelling novels. This is so real, such a convincingly and frighteningly plausible dystopia, that there were times I had to walk away from it for a while. Its protagonist is something of a nobody whose apathy about the dreadful world he inhabits and what his part in it is becomes too much for him to stomach. Once his rebellion is sparked his mission takes him on a challenging journey.

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