William's Reviews > The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Extraordinary in every way. Another masterpiece by Ms North.
As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book. Thank you.

Who am I? What makes me, Me? ... and much deeper thoughts I cannot yet express ...

Claire North is a philosopher, a teacher, a young miracle of wisdom. To become her protagonists is to discover hidden parts of who we are, who we might be. She reaches inside us, she opens us to who we really are, and then asks us, "Why?"

Again and again, she astonishes me. I have never read an author like her. Extraordinary.

A clever concept: Hope Arden is noticed and remembered only when people are looking at her, interacting with her. She meets Parker, another person like her, and aches to remember him:

I am frightened now. I am frightened that when he fades from my memory, a piece of me will die too. The feelings, the things I have learned, the ideas I have had today, so many ideas, so many feelings, they will die with my memory. I fear that loss. But more, a terror that I must share with my future self. I fear what this means for me.

If you forget the joy of this day, then what joy you give to others will also be forgotten, and your life has no consequence, no meaning, no worth. I am a shadow, blasted away by the sun, a meaningless occlusion of light that fades with the day.

- - -

I say:
The past is gone, and tomorrow is an illusion.
There is only Now.

And here, Claire expresses what I know, more eloquently of course:

You said that, since the past vanishes with memory, all that we can live in is now..... What matters, therefore, is not hope for things to come, nor regret for things passed, but this action in this moment, these deeds, this now.

Claire has a little dial she gently turns as she writes, higher and higher as we read. We see the dial is labelled EXTRAORDINARY...

23% ... Hope:
I cannot remember Parker now. I do not remember his face, his touch, his body, his words, his deeds, our days. But I have one thought that I cling to in this present time: that at the end of that week we spent together, I had acquired a taste for comedy. He is forgotten, but I am changed. I have no words to express how wondrous this is.

I ache to quote so much of this book, as usual for Claire North...

She was crying, silently, holding my arm, crying. I let her cry a while, held her close, felt her snot and tears on my shoulder, wanted to cry myself, why is that, when I hear a child cry on the train it makes me sad, see a stranger weep and feel tears come to my eyes, a weakness, perhaps, a place where emotion hasn’t become accustomed to the extremities of feeling.

47% ... Me, too....
I found I was crying, just crying, just a girl crying, and the carer asked softly, where’s your sister now?
"Not so far away, I replied. Not so far.”

61% ...
Hope says:
“Is that why you keep me around? Because you think… I’m free?”
Silence, a while.
Then, “Yes. I think you are the only free woman I have ever met.”
I sat, shaking, and didn’t have any words.

If Hope has true freedom, then freedom is never what we seek... What an astounding thought.

99% ...
“There is a society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before
To mingle with the universe and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.”
- Lord Byron

- - -

Wow. Hope's friend, Byron14 says:
“We have sacrificed thought,” she replied flatly, voice hard, eyes steady. “We live in a land of freedom, and the only freedoms we can choose are to spend, fuck and eat. The rest is taboo. Loner. Slut. Weirdo. Faggot. Whore. Bitch. Druggie. Scrounger. Ugly. Poor. Muslim. Other. Hate the other. Kill the other. Aspire, as us, to be together, to become better, to become… perfect. Perfection. A unified ideal. Perfection: flawless. Perfection: white, rich, male. Perfection: car, shoe, dress, smile. Perfection: the death of thought."

- - -

So We'll Go No More a Roving

So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.

- Lord Byron

............

And at the end, I wept. Why?
It’s not easy to say....
Is it because there is no hope, or because there is?
Is it Hope’s fate that makes us weep?
Or is it our fate?
Is it because we are alone in ways that can never be expressed?
I know that it is primal, this need, this quest.

And as I have grown old, I have found this inside me, more clear with each year -

Life is too short, and sometimes brutal,
and in the end we have only each other.
Nothing else matters.

- - -

Notes and quotes

6.0% ... delicious Claire North...
“For a copper to marry an immigrant, particularly at that time,” mused my aunt, “it says a lot about their love. But then, your dad always was a good man first, and a copper second; it’s why his career’s been so slow. And your mum… she’s always believed in people. That’s why she called you Hope.”

13.0% ... “Reality: the conjectured state of things as they actually exist.”"

15.0% ... Wow
If you forget the joy of this day, then what joy you give to others will also be forgotten, and your life has no consequence, no meaning, no worth. I am a shadow, blasted away by the sun, a meaningless occlusion of light that fades with the day.

37.0% .... a plot twist, unexpected, a joy, a sorrow. A truth about being alone, but not, sometimes.

44.0% .... I love the precision, the tradecraft of Hope's thievery. Her theft in this part of the book is ballet, is Olympic, is bewitching... awesome!

50.0% ... Written in 2015, Claire North is prescient:
“An electoral campaign based on hating the foreigner, the poor, the unknown, every lie of course destroyed by experts ... but Matheus Pereyra did not print the views of the experts, but rather… printed the screaming. Always, the world screaming, loudly, screaming”

71.0% ... Claire North has a little dial she gently turns, higher and higher as she writes. We see the dial is labelled EXTRAORDINARY...

98.0% ... Claire is a philosopher, a teacher, a young miracle of wisdom. To become her protagonists is to discover hidden parts of who you are, who you might be. Again and again, she astonishes me.
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