The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
By Claire North

This novel is about a man who dies only to discover he is re-born in the same year and in the same place as he was before. He then lives through the same period before dying, then being re-born yet again; this happens every time he dies. So, immortality apparently but of a slightly different configuration to one we normally find in works of fantasy. The difference between this novel and Kate Atkinson's Life After Life is that Harry August remembers his previous lives. I really liked Life After Life and I like this novel as well, perhaps more. It was certainly a novel I savoured reading.

Written in the first person, after dying once or twice Harry comes to realise and accept what is happening and all the possibilities this presents: good and bad. It turns out that there are also a few terrible dangers being someone with this condition. The dangers come from the "linear" sorts (i.e. normal like you or me) as well as people who live and die the same way he does. These special people are uncommon but have formed a secret "club" over the course of history. They sometimes get messages from the future due to the way their lives can overlap.

It turns out that the future is going significantly wrong and Harry needs to find out why; and if things can be fixed.

A really enjoyable almost-mainstream science-fiction novel. Claire North is definitely a novelist to read again. In fact, Slow Gods is on my queue now.