You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend

our disbelief.

I'm Eric Mollinsky.

I'm a bit selective about the literature that I read.

And it's not just that I want a good story, but I want to become enamored with the way

that a writer crafts their stories, from the tiniest word choices to the big themes

that I want to think about long after I've put the book down.

And about a year ago, I was really excited to discover the work of the British author,

Claire North.

Her novels were actually recommended to me by a listener, and I started with her best-known

book, The First 15 Lies of Harry August, which came out in 2014.

It's about a man named Harry August, who keeps reliving his life over and over again.

And the scale of the story is epic and global, but it's also deeply personal and existential

because for Harry, experiencing his death again and again isn't as bad as experiencing

his dysfunctional childhood over and over again.

And then I learned two things about Claire North, which blew me away.

First, she was in her 20s when she wrote that book.

And this was the first novel from Claire North.

But I thought it had a sophistication of, you know, like a mid-career novel.

And then I learned something else, which blew me away.

The first 15 Lies of Harry August may have been the first book written under the name

Claire North, but she had a whole other career before that, writing urban fantasy novels

...