Best Science Fiction - Meet Me in Another Life by Catriona Silvey

Publisher – Harper Voyager

Published – Out Now

Price – £14.99 hardback £7.99 Kindle eBook

Thora and Santi have met before…

Under the clocktower in central Cologne, with nothing but the stars above and their futures ahead.

They will meet again…

They don’t know it yet, but they’ll meet again: in numerous lives they will become friends, colleagues, lovers, enemies – meeting over and over for the first time, every time; each coming to know every version of the other.

Only they can make sure it’s not for the last time.

But as they’re endlessly drawn together and the lines between their different lives begin to blur, they are faced with one question: why?

They must discover the truth of their strange attachment before this, and all their lives, are lost forever.

Book versus Movie raises questions on is there something one form of storytelling can do that the other cannot. One interesting idea is the idea of the alternate universe. In a visual drama you can show changes more easily but there is also showing a character behaving differently to their usual portrayal (often goatees may be involved). A book though hasn’t quite got that ability so how does a book create multiple realities? This is the ambitious task of Catriona Silvey’s Meet me in Another Life where its two leads meet again and again in multiple universes and for me is largely successful and well worth a look.

The story is set in modern Cologne and starts with two students Santi from Spain and Thora from England who cross paths one night as two strangers in a strange town. They have one of those sparkling philosophical and fun conversations that suggest they will soon be become best friends and then Santi tragically dies…In the next chapter we then meet Santi as a middle-aged teacher awaiting his new young student Thora and he finds his precocious student challenging him in unexpected ways. Witch each chapter we revisit these two characters in a variety of roles as realities shifts – lovers, relative, co-workers and slowly they realise that they are strangely connected and that they need to find out why they are constantly meeting again and again.

There is a masterclass here in how you can play with character here. Each chapter creates its own reality, and we see them as adults, teenagers, older characters or very young and we manage to accept them as that version of the characters, but we also slowly pick up the recurring character traits. Santi the more driven character who believes in an ordered universe and wants to solve the puzzle of life while Thora is however more focused on seeking her best life each time enjoying the moment. These two competing philosophies (which also act for the reader as the ternal question as to whether destiny is sealed bounce between the recurring chapters and Silvery throws in recurring characters and motifs that make us start to see the wider connections and repetitions. This is an absolutely fascinating approach and one I’ve never read before doing it so well and Silvey plays it just right in timing as just when we start to get used and possibly bored by the changing stations, we realise that our characters too have realised what is going on. A subtle change of direction that really enhances the central mystery.

The other strength for this tale is the sense of place. Cologne feels like a real city and we explore all parts of it from schools, universities to museums and its gives the novel a sense of a place (I’ve no idea if real or not) but it locks us in a world where its less massive alternate histories like changes of govt or different wars and more people at different levels of society living their own lives. Its beautifully subtle and really uses the power of a book to create a world to great effect – this strangely becomes our constant rather than characters who each time have slightly different personas.

There is though a niggle I have and that’s the ultimate explanation for why all of this is happening. The ending is logical and there are clues I just unfortunately found it slightly both predictable and impractical. I can’t reveal the mystery, but it went for an obvious ending and my joy of reading this book and being on these character’s epic journey through the multiverse felt a bit of a clunkier landing than I was expecting after all the cleverness of what came before.

With my reader hat on I totally recommend you try this book. Its smart, heartfelt and despite the ending I found something science fiction doesn’t do very often very well. With my Subjective Chaos hat on though although I thoroughly enjoyed this the ending for me nips it in being the best read so far. But you’ll be well rewarded trying this out anyway! Recommended!