The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Hope Arden is brilliant, esoterically beautiful, athletic, audacious, daring, and kind, in her way. She’d make a wonderful friend or jewel thief. The fact that she chose the latter has a lot to do with her condition, which makes friendships inevitably temporary. People forget Hope. All people. Her parents. Her teachers. The police. Her surgeon (when she needs a surgeon). All of Hope’s interactions with others are first impressions because as soon as she leaves the room that person will not recall having met her, or what she looks like. That’s a great gift for a jewel thief, but not so great for lasting friendships.

Hope’s condition is more than a mere jumping off point for what will become an international thriller with heists, show more chases, disguises, threats, spies, police inspectors, and a nefarious App called Perfection that is ruining people’s lives. Apart from all the razzle, we spend a great deal of time with Hope reflecting on what it means to be whomever she is and just how much the recognition by others is built in to that conception. Would you yearn to have Hope’s condition, or would you, like Hope, desperately long for someone, anyone, to see her twice and still know that it is her? It’s a high concept premise that has deep ramifications for character and plot. And a fair bit of thoughtful observation on what it means to be a person in an age that is so invested in one’s social media presence.

I like the writing, which is often suitably swift, but also at times languorously reflective. And I liked the character of Hope Arden, who goes through substantial growth over the course of the novel. Some of the ancillary characters were stock, but that’s not so surprising in a thriller. And the baddies were also sometimes goodies, with the big baddie possibly also being the most good of all. Clearly international jewel thievery and nefarious conspiracy is a morally topsy turvy world.

I think many readers would enjoy this book.

Recommended. show less

Hope Arden is a woman who everyone forgets – quite literally. Someone can meet her, have a conversation with her, sleep with her even, and when she goes away they have no recollection of her, so every time she meets someone it is the first time for them. This makes it hard for her to make friends, forge relationships or hold down a job, but it’s very useful tool for an international jewel thief, which is what Hope becomes. She then becomes embroiled in a plot to steal an app called Perfection. The app awards points to people for improving themselves or their lives, such as having the right cosmetic treatments, going to the right gym enough, or buying the right food; it tracks your every movement – and quite frankly sounds awful, show more and perilously close to where we are in real life.

There are some interesting ideas about what it means to be perfect, and what it means to be memorable, and there is no doubt that some of the writing is very beautiful and clever. However, this book did not really work for me – I did not like the stream of consciousness style of narrative (although I have previously written other books written in a similar way and enjoyed them) and I did not like the constant flying off at tangents.

I did think that for someone who is forgettable, Hope was a very fully fleshed out character who the reader got to know and essentially root for, even if she was not always likeable. But none of the other main players were ever really more than cardboard cutouts. I stayed up late to finish this book, which usually means one of two things; either I am loving a book and can’t put it down, or I want to get to the end of it, precisely so that I CAN put it down. This was a case of the latter. It’s not badly written, far from it, and I liked the two main threads – Hope’s forgettability and the Perfection app. But it never really worked and I didn’t feel any sort of connect. I do have another book by Claire North, and I will give it a go at some point. show less

The phrase “ghosting” means to disappear, and that’s what’s happening in the latest from Claire North, another pseudonymous writer (she’s actually Catherine Webb, the British literary wunderkind who published her first novel at 14). This is her third outing as North, and like the fantastic The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, she’s taken the sort of situation that is typically called “speculative fiction” and, in The Sudden Appearance of Hope, turned it into a meditation on morality and ethics.

Hope Arden is eminently forgettable. In fact, once people lose sight of her for a few minutes, they forget she was ever there. It sounds like a useful trick, except for what it means: No way to finish school. No friends. No show more family connections to speak of. No way to get a job, or failing that, to get unemployment.

So Hope has become a thief, existing in the dark and less-than-licit edges of society. It’s working for her–kinda–right up until she steals some diamonds from the wrong people, and that puts her athwart the proprietors of the Perfection app.

It’s an app that helps people attain–you guessed it–perfection. And it’s got some real problems.

The plot is far to complex to summarize (and did involve reading past bedtime to finish, which is always a good sign), but Hope’s journey leads her to ask some difficult questions about what it means to have a moral center. That’s a question we could all stand to grapple with, even if we’re not as forgettable as Hope.

Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com show less

North’s The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August was subject to quite a bit of online buzz. So I read it, and enjoyed it. And North’s second book too, Touch, I read that and enjoyed it. But North’s star seemed to wane a little and I sort of stopped reading her books. But then The Sudden Appearance of Hope popped up on promotion on Kindle, so I decided to give it a go. And I’m glad I did. It helped that the novel opened in Dubai, and actually managed to present the emirate in a way that resembled the real place. Which is more than can be said of most books featuring Dubai. Hope is a young woman cursed with the ability – left unexplained, and not entirely scientifically credible – which means people forget her completely show more minutes after she has stopped interacting with them. This makes life extremely difficult for her, but she has become a thief, and a very good one. She flits around the world, hanging out with the rich and famous. And robbing them. Which is why it all starts to go slightly wrong when in Dubai she robs someone at a party for an app called Perfection, which rewards people for doing things which “improve” them. This promptly drags Hope into a campaign to destroy Perfection, which is pretty much a pure distillation of late-stage capitalism, and… Like the two earlier books by North I read, The Sudden Appearance of Hope doesn’t seem quite know what it’s about. It’s had a great premise – two great premises, in fact. And they do neatly slot together. And provide opportunity for plenty of pithy commentary. But North can’t seem to decide where her focus lies. I’ve seen complaints the prose is “too literary”, but I actually liked that about the book – ie, it tried for something that wasn’t your bog-standard beige commercial prose. And although the novel wore its research lightly, it was clear North had done her homework. I put down The Sudden Appearance of Hope after I’d finished and decided I really should seek out her other novels. show less

Hope Arden is one character you won't soon forget.

(Full disclosure: I received a free electronic ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for suicide, rape, and general violence.)

And at Edinburgh Waverley, I bought a notebook from the stationery shop, and a bag of pens, and as the engine blared its victory over inertia and the train began to crawl south, back to England, back to the warm, back to Derby and my sister who waited, I began to write.
I wrote of the past.

Of the things that had brought me here.

Of being forgotten, and being remembered.

Of diamonds in Dubai, fires in Istanbul. Of walks through Tokyo, the mountains of Korea, the islands of the southern seas. Of America and the greyhound bus, of Filipa and Parker, show more Gauguin and Byron14.

I wrote, to make my memory true.

The past, living.

Now.

Here, in these words.

I wrote to make myself real.

-- 4.5 stars --

When she was sixteen years old, Hope Arden began to disappear - from peoples' memories.

It started small: teachers would forget to pester Hope for her homework; friends stopped saving her a seat in the cafeteria. One day, she came home only to find her mother clearing out her room, bagging up her belongings to donate to a charity shop; for a second, she forgot that Hope still lived with them.

Eventually people ceased to remember Hope altogether: a minute or two after turning away, she'd slip from their minds like a shadow. Details of their seconds-old interaction with her would linger, but the girl at the center of the memory was nowhere to be found. Hope's parents held out the longest, but one day even they forget their oldest daughter. You could say that Hope ran away from home that day, but is it still home if you're a perpetual stranger?

Being unmemorable is more challenging than you might think. Reliable health care, housing, gainful employment, continuing education - all of it was beyond Hope's reach. And so she did the only thing she could with this new ability-slash-curse: become the best damn thief she could. Like her anonymity, Hope's career as a criminal started small: shoplifting led to pick pocketing led to elaborate jewel heists that required months of planning. If she wasn't always a consummate professional, at least she could fall back on her forgettable-ness. The few times she was arrested, all Hope had to do was wait for someone to leave her in a room, alone...and forget all about her.

Maybe what Hope was doing couldn't be called living, but she was surviving, at least. That is, until Dubai. There to steal the Chrysalis diamond from the Saudi royal family, Hope made friends - of a sort - with her target's cousin, Reina bint Badr al Mustakfi. After just a few meetings, Reina killed herself. Because she was depressed. Because she needed help. Because what she got instead was Perfection.

Perfection: a life coach in digital form. For a small monthly fee, the app will tell you what to eat, where to shop, when to work out. It gives you points for following its advice - say, granting it access to your bank accounts so that it can better "perfect" your life - and subtracts points when you fail to live up to its standards. The highest rollers are members of the elite 106 Club: all living in the same luxury condo, attending the same swanky parties (where they make business and political deals that earn them - what else - more points!), and getting the same plastic surgery and mind-altering treatments.

But Hope isn't privy to all these details quite yet. All she knows is that Reina - a lovely, caring, compassionate person - killed herself because she thought she wasn't good enough. Perfection - and the larger society that birthed it - told her as much.

And so a heist of professional pride becomes one of personal spite, pulling Hope into the world of Prometheus and Perfection, Dr. Filipa Pereyra-Conroy and her brother Rafe, and the terrorist known as Byron14 and her pursuer, mugurski71. Along the way she'll meet - or rather reacquaint herself with - another forgettable like herself; be kidnapped and nearly burned alive; bring Prometheus to its knees; and witness a literal feeding frenzy of perfect people.

The Sudden Appearance of Hope is, for lack of a better word, bonkers. A roller-coaster ride, it has a little bit of just about everything: science fiction, dystopia, horror, suspense, mystery, romance, conspiracy theories, corporate espionage, philosophy, literary fiction. Sometimes it almost feels like a poetry slam, as Hope's narration slips into a stream-of-consciousness-type jam. (The writing might not be for everyone, but I loved it.)

In less talented hands, Hope's disappearing act could have easily devolve into a wacky plot device; but North uses it to explore some pretty heavy issues: the nature of self-identity; the malleability of memory; ethics in the absence of consequences; self-esteem and -worth and how these influence (and are influenced by) attention, approval, and relationships. Who is Hope, really, if no one remembers her? If nothing she does is of consequence? If she has no friends, no family, no lovers; no one to remember her? What can you be if you're only able to live in the Now?

The Sudden Appearance of Hope boasts a dizzying number of subplots and plot twists, even for a nearly 500-page book. It does feel a little long - once or twice, I found myself impatiently checking my progress on the Kindle - but, for the most part, the story managed to hold my attention. Actually, that doesn't quite do it justice: for most of the read I white-knuckled it, staying up to finish "just one more chapter" until I could barely keep my eyes open.

Also dizzying: the diversity, in the best way possible. This story is seriously international in scope, with our biracial heroine traveling all over the globe: Dubai, Oman, Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Milan, Venice, New York City, San Francisco, São Paulo. With her dark skin and dark hair ("twisted into long ropes down my back"), Hope stands out in many of the places she visits: but only for so long. Hope's mother, of the Nuer people, walked across the desert of Sudan and Egypt, until she reached Istanbul and, eventually, the UK. Hope often conjures Nyaring Ayun-Arden, imagining her journey as her own, finding strength and presence of self in her mum's trek. She carries something - many things - of her mother's even if she is no longer remembered as her mother's daughter. This is among some of the loveliest imagery in the book.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2016/05/25/the-sudden-appearance-of-hope-by-claire-nor... show less

Partway through this book, I realized I’ve read two other books by the author: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, which I really liked, and 84k, which was grim and hideous and tried to suck the soul out of my body. (And yet somehow I’d forgotten the name of the author. Twice. That’s very unlike me, to forget an author whose books I have an emotional reaction to. Relevant, maybe, to the subject of this book.) I knew, upon finishing those books, how I felt about them, what I thought about them. This one I’m still not sure.

This is a fascinating concept — the woman who cannot be remembered — and the book touches on a lot of things: how we define ourselves, how we choose what to do, how our circumstances change us. How show more people need flaws, and people need people. How society works and who it fails and why. And all of those concepts are inherently interesting. Also, there’s a ton of action in this: heists, escapes, espionage, stalking. All good things.

The book is also a surprisingly brisk read. It moves quickly, albeit episodically — you can kind of see the stitches where the different chunks were sewn together. While I was reading this, I wanted to keep reading it. Another very good thing.

But at the end of the day, I read for relationships. And Hope, by the nature of her condition/superpower, struggles with relationships. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have them, just that they’re one-sided and weird and often painful. All of that was fascinating while I was reading the book, but it’s left me with lingering bleakness on the other side.

Also, I was sort of creeped out that three categories of beings could remember Hope: pets, people with dementia, and Hope’s physically disabled little sister. Like. That’s a weird set of three, and without any explanation ever for what causes Hope to be forgotten, it feels, uh. Not cool.

And that lack of explanation is what made the book not a great fit for me. This is speculative fiction, but it doesn’t do one thing that science fiction generally does: it doesn’t explain things. There’s never an answer for why Hope is the way she is, even if there are hints. There’s no explanation for why pets and Grace, Hope’s sister, can remember her. There’s no why, just what, and for me, that’s not an ideal book.

There’s also not really an ending. I don’t want to talk too much about this for fear of spoilers, but I will say: North seems to struggle with resolution. But I think maybe that’s fine for this book, because it’s about how you make a human life, and human lives don’t generally have tidy resolutions while they’re still happening.

Basically: this book was interesting and different. It’s not something I will recommend to others, but it is something I’m glad I read. show less

Freedom and Slavery, as written by one of the most dauntless minds in literature, today. :)

Of course, it's also a very clever novel of freedom and slavery, written within a couple of very interesting premises, but by this point, I'm willing to assume that this great author is always going to push the hell out of boundaries.

[b:The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August|20706317|The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August|Claire North|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1407712314s/20706317.jpg|25807847] brought out being different lives by reliving the whole damn life within one person, and [b:Touch|22314178|Touch|Claire North|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1415977617s/22314178.jpg|41706739] polarized the concept of show more identity by hopping from body to body while always being the core someone within, and [b:The Sudden Appearance of Hope|25746699|The Sudden Appearance of Hope|Claire North|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1454363620s/25746699.jpg|45587878] turns it all around once again.

What are the real consequences of living a life where no one can remember you? Turn thief, hacker, and be endlessly jealous of others who can at least have some way to define themselves by how others perceive them? This premise is much bigger than it first appears. This isn't a super-power or a mild tale of the invisible woman. Hope is a complicated and rather brilliant woman who is absolutely free to do whatever she wants except for the one thing that's denied her. Home, Love, and Hope.

The second wonderful premise is the idea of Perfection. Think about a social app on steroids that makes facebook look away in shame, that pushes each user to to become their better selves with recommendations and rewards that gets so big that the whole damn world is enraptured by it... even if it is Culture As Pure Marketing, soulless and enslaved.

Hope is the diametric opposite of Perfection, and most of the novel is a dance between both of these ideas. It's a thriller and an introspective and horrifying SF all at once. And it's deep. Very deep. I can't recommend this tale enough. It's very much a social tale and one that revolves around identity, but it also has a good deal of Tor browsers and high-tech theft, too, so I personally thought it was fun as freaking hell. :) Tour de force. :) show less