#BlogTour ‘Meet Me In Another Life’ by Catriona Silvey

About the book…

Two people. Infinite lifetimes. One impossible choice.

Thora and Santi are strangers in a foreign city when a chance encounter intertwines their fates. At once, they recognize in each other a kindred spirit—someone who shares their insatiable curiosity, who is longing for more in life than the cards they’ve been dealt. Only days later, though, a tragic accident cuts their story short.

But this is only one of the many connections they share. Like satellites trapped in orbit around each other, Thora and Santi are destined to meet again: as a teacher and prodigy student; a caretaker and dying patient; a cynic and a believer. In numerous lives they become friends, colleagues, lovers, and enemies. But as blurred memories and strange patterns compound, Thora and Santi come to a shocking revelation—they must discover the truth of their mysterious attachment before their many lives come to one, final end.

Hugest of thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Blog Tours for the invite and Harper Voyager for my gifted review copy of Meet Me In Another Life which is out in e-book and hardcover from July 8th!

This book was everything I needed to read, right now, I had just finished a very dark, haunting and beautiful thriller that left me reeling and to jump into the story of Santi and Thora was like diving into a swimming pool on a hot day.

Deeply satisfying, emotional without being overwrought, ‘Meet Me In Another Life’ introduces you to its central protagonists at what seems like the beginning of their journey. It is, as far as we readers are aware, the first time they have met, or, maybe, just the first time that we have met them.

The very essence of Thora is her needed for scientific certainty which sends her ricocheting every time she has to take decisive action-she is constantly tormented by the possibility of the road not taken, and whether there are hundreds of her living the life she chose to leave behind. This is reflected in a kaleidoscope of fractured images when she nearly falls out of the clock tower in Cologne that she and Santi first meet in. Did she see God, or a window to multiverses, or, was her brain projecting the alternate outcomes of decisions which she made that night?

This brief introduction to Thora and Santi has them meeting at university, a mixer that Thora finds an impossibly loud and impossibly anti-mixer environment. Going outside she finds Santi laying on his back-has he collapsed or has he deliberately laid down?

From here they create a connection which goes on through various lifetimes, various roles (husband, lover, teacher, parent,friend) are seen in vignettes that change the situation, and yet never the essential Santi and Thora. The constellation theme (seen in freckles, tattoos and so forth) on Thora’s wrist, her scientific mind in an environment which values the humanities over the astronomical dreams which Thora yearns for.

In contrast, Santi lives a life of feelings, moments, and reactions to them, trusting to something bigger and more knowledgeable than himself. He and Thora meet over and over and as they do, the reader and the characters begin to see a pattern in their lives as they become entwined in an ever decreasing circle at the same time as their thoughts expand.

I had no idea where this was going, I fell in love with, and believed, in Santi and Thora from page one and happily travelled with them and space cat, Felicette, who wanders in and out of their lives and may, in fact, be the key to it all. You want them to live happily ever after and have no idea if they will, because their lives intersect and part so many times. It is a testament to Catriona’s skills that she keeps the reader so involved and invested in her characters whilst putting them in so many alternate realities. They center the tale, they make it real, believable and at the same time, ethereal and other worldly. A time slip novel, an exploration of space and of our essential humanity despite the background scene changes, this is a beautiful and lyrical novel to treasure.

About the author…

Catriona Silvey was born in Glasgow and grew up in Perthshire and Derbyshire, which left her with a strange accent and a distrust of flat places. She overcame the latter to do a BA in English at Cambridge, and spent the next few years there working in scientific publishing. After that she did a PhD in language evolution, in the hope of finding out where all these words came from in the first place.

Following stints in Edinburgh and Chicago, she returned to Cambridge, where she lives with her husband, son, and a very peculiar cat. When she’s not working as a researcher studying meaning in language, she writes fantasy and science fiction. Her short stories have been performed at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize.

Links-http://catrionasilvey.com/

Twitter @silveycat @RandomTTours @harpervoyageruk