Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Review: The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North


Hope Arden is afflicted with a rather peculiar condition. When she was a teenager those around her gradually came to forget she existed until even her own family forgot they had a daughter. Now everyone she comes into contact with will forget her within a few minutes of being out of her company. Hope uses her peculiar condition to become a master thief. After a woman Hope has grown found of kills herself due to a mobile phone application called perfection, Hope decides to publicly embarrass it's creators, not knowing that there may be far more sinister forces in play.

The concept is similar to North's two previous novels, a protagonist who is afflicted with an unexplained condition that the majority of the population are not effected by. Hope is an interesting character and North captures the emotion of her plight beautifully. The little nuances she adopts to help herself cope are cleverly incorporated into the prose and make this a very human story. I found the support characters slightly inconsistent especially towards the end of the novel where their actions did not gel with what had gone before. Once the plot moves away from Hope's personal struggle I found the perfection angle less engaging.

Overall North once again has built a very human and engaging protagonist, less care with the support characters and plot detract slightly from what could have been a masterpiece. 8/10.

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