Dubi reviewed The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North
Review of 'The Sudden Appearance of Hope' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
I'm afraid this book was a disappointment. I loved North's previous work, especially the Gameshouse trilogy, but Hope failed everywhere where Gameshouse excelled.
Hope Arden is forgotten by the world. She can walk around people and interact with them, but almost as soon as they stop focusing on her, they forget she ever existed. They make up explanations to why they did what they did with her, now that they can't remember her ever being there. This is a curse, but Hope learns to live around that, making the best of being able to steal something right in front of the owner's eyes, and still they'll forget they ever saw it stolen as soon as she gets out of sight.
I loved this premise, which continues on the "what ifs" that are at the core of much of North's work. But this time, everything feels so much sloppier. The writing …
I'm afraid this book was a disappointment. I loved North's previous work, especially the Gameshouse trilogy, but Hope failed everywhere where Gameshouse excelled.
Hope Arden is forgotten by the world. She can walk around people and interact with them, but almost as soon as they stop focusing on her, they forget she ever existed. They make up explanations to why they did what they did with her, now that they can't remember her ever being there. This is a curse, but Hope learns to live around that, making the best of being able to steal something right in front of the owner's eyes, and still they'll forget they ever saw it stolen as soon as she gets out of sight.
I loved this premise, which continues on the "what ifs" that are at the core of much of North's work. But this time, everything feels so much sloppier. The writing isn't as tight, the voices of the different characters all sound the same. The narrative is more schtick than style. The book reminded me a lot of Chuck Palahniuk's horror-ish books (Diary, Lullaby), in both themes and narrative style. I half expected North to make a reference to cornflower blue at some point... The Perfection app, the anti-consumerist thread that goes through all his work (albeit with a more Black Mirror-esque angle to it, to fit the times).
But while I love Palahniuk's stuff, it just didn't work here. Maybe because the book was just so unreasonably long. It felt like it could seriously use some pruning and editing. Repetitive digressions that did nothing to build atmosphere or characters or move the plot along, the pointless bouts of swearing - so frequent that they lose any dramatic effect they might have had. The random factoids that served no purpose as far as I could tell (and felt like they were directly lifted from Palahniuk's style, actually -- I'm not saying she did, just that she might as well have).
The truth is I barely got myself to finish the book, and when I finally got there, I didn't feel like I was rewarded for that effort - the ending was bland and added nothing to my appreciation of the book.
I'm not losing hope in Claire North, not yet. But I will certainly be less giddy about her next book.
