Meet Me in Another Life by Catriona Silvey

★★★★★

Marvellous tale of lives lived many times over … or so it would seem

“You can’t ever know someone completely. You’d have to be everything to them, and that’s impossible.”

Thora Lišková and Santiago López encounter each other as university students in Cologne late at night outside a party, messing up their introductions so thoroughly that they stage a do-over, and eventually bond through a shared love of stargazing and by climbing the ruined clock tower together. Both long to travel to the stars and explore the universe; Santi who believes in fate and wants to see God, and Thora who has always wanted to be “elsewhere”. But Santi’s sudden tragic death puts paid to their relationship developing any further – until next we discover Santi López the science teacher living in Cologne and facing a new pupil in his class, the seven-year-old Thora Lišková, who tells him she wants to be an astronaut when she grows up …

Life after life after life after life … Thora and Santi continue to meet over and over again as different incarnations of themselves, and in very different relationships to each other and those around them. As each of their successive lives plays out, fragments of their past lives begin to jog their memories, and they start to seek each other out, trying to piece together what is really happening to them. Is what they are experiencing a form of reincarnation? Why do they keep being thrown together in endlessly varying ways? Are they enduring a kind of punishment? Or are they supposed to learn from their experiences, to improve themselves in their next lives? Is it all part of a divine plan, as Santi believes? Or is it, as Thora thinks, an elaborate cosmic game? And who is the tall man with long hair and a bright blue coat who keeps reappearing throughout their different lives to tell them “You’re here”?

Superbly plotted and constructed, Meet Me in Another Life is a masterful, gripping read that will keep the reader hooked until its powerful and moving end. The story – or, rather, stories – of Thora and Santi explore the multitude of ways in which human beings can relate to each other, whilst maintaining the integrity and believabilty of its two protagonists. Dizzying, unexpected, and even shocking turnarounds from one life to the next serve to heighten the suspense as layers of reality are slowly unveiled. Tension builds as each new life and relationship reveal new traits and hitherto unimagined depths to both Thora and Santi, rendering both characters enormously sympathetic albeit very different, and making their unbreakable connection over numerous lifetimes ever more poignant.

Although bittersweet and heartrending, this tale somehow at the same time manages to be joyful and uplifting, and to convey an unwavering faith in the ability of people to connect, understand, and love one another. Engrossing, exciting, and complex, the story has an extraordinary sense of purpose, as the author lays intriguing clues to the mystery throughout – and yet each of Thora and Santi’s lives is so compelling that the question at the centre of it all is temporarily forgotten, so riveted is the reader by the new lives and relationship the protagonists are navigating. One could argue that it is an amalgam of many genres – sci-fi, fantasy, speculative fiction, romance, adventure, thriller – but, ultimately, Meet Me in Another Life defies any form of categorisation and that is all to the good. A brilliant debut novel and most highly recommended.

Jo-Anne Blanco (as Arwen Evenstar) for Elite Group
Elite Group received a copy of the book to review

©Jo-Anne Blanco 2021