Claire North - author appreciation post
Now that I finished all of her adult books, I think I have rounded out my opinion of this author.
First off, I’m hard pressed not to gawk open-mouthed at all the knowledge this author accumulated and polishes to a real shine in these books. I mean, she’s only 32 years old. When did she have the time to slurp this all up? Does her existence extend into some parallel universes where her other selves are busy studying history, physics, languages (including 4 Asian ones), art, opera, literature and dozens of sciences and she only has to download the stuff from them or how does this work? It’s a marvel, really. It’s one of the aspects of her writing that I like best.
Secondly, not once is a theme or setting repeated or borrowed from a previous novel. O.k. we come to Venice twice but in different centuries, so that doesn’t count. We get intricate plots all around and the questions about our humanity, sanity, motivations and half a dozen themes more are discussed in-depth.
My favs are definitely the Gameshouse novellas, because I love the triumph of a female character in 17th century Venice setting - and The Sudden Appearence of Hope; where additional discussions about racism, consumerism and social networks are presented. The End of the Day is a runner up, followed by The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, 84K and Touch. This one last - I’m not terribly fond of thrillers but I had to read it since I wanted a complete overview over this author.
The writing is always tailored to the story, the protagonist and the setting, so when Hope detects her brain has been messed with, you do get a couple of lines of fuckfuckfuck which definitely does not happen in the Gameshouse novellas: here’s a more sedate and dreamlike tone prevalent. The prose is always consistent with the book and I love that.
Claire North goes onto my auto-buy list, too.
EDIT: Claire North = Kate Griffin = Catherine Webb (thanks anon)
