Reviews

Meet Me in Another Life – Catriona Silvey

SUMMARY: 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

OPINION: The time traveller’s wife is one of my favourite books, and one I come to time and time again. So when I saw that “Meet Me in Another Life” was comped to it I was very excited. Additionally, questions of determinism and to what extent events in our lives shape our core selves are like catnip to me. However to assume its another version of TTW is to do both of them a disservice, I love that MMiAL isn’t a romance – that a variety of ways Thora and Santi interact and relate to each other occur and very rarely are the two of them as a romantic couple a possibility.

When I first started reading this for SCKA, I was bemused though. It had been nominated for the science fiction category but I felt like it was much more literary than SF, however as the story progresses it becomes much more clear and to say anymore would be a spoiler. However for those who like a very strong sci-fi element they may be slightly disappointed, it is relevant to the story, but many of the tropes of sci-fi are missing here.

We get to see both sides of  Thora and Santi. While Thora is initially presented as the difficult prickly one, and Santi the more calm, patient one this evolves and changes throughout the book and different lives, with Thora learning different ways of behaving, and Santi having his faith and sense of surety shaken through some of the iterations. However the book makes it clear that that Santi’s acceptance doesn’t have its own issues and that it’s not smoothing out Thora’s sharp edges, or changing her too far away from her core self – one that remains not easy to cooperate with. I really enjoyed this element as we ask a lot of our women characters, and it’s nice to see one that wasn’t the perfect team player at the end of the book. 

To conclude this is definitely a character driven book, one with speculative elements but not necessarily in the guise or format expected for a sci-fi book. It definitely leans on the more literary approach even if it doesn’t suffer from some of the frustrations lit fic can sometimes have for me. 

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