The Many Lives of Heloise Starchild – John Ironmonger
Following his wonderfully life-affirming view of the apocalypse in the delightful Not Forgetting the Whale – a situation that we can much more readily identify with and a reassurance that is very much needed in these pandemic times – John Ironmonger returns to a similar theme of an individual with extraordinary memory abilities that was there in his first novel The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder . Here, in The Many Lives of Heloise Starchild , it’s not just a catalogue of all the experiences gathered over 20 years of a life, but a far more expansive look at life and experience gathered across several tumultuous centuries. The experiences of eight lifetimes no less are all inherited by Katya Němcová, a young girl living on a farm in the Slovak mountains. It’s a ‘gift’ that has been passed down from mother to daughter across several generations, the memories stretching back to a French noblewoman Heloise Montbelliard born in 1759 during an appearance of Halley’s comet, who died duri...