Six Lives by Lavie Tidhar follows the lives of 6 people throughout history, all connected by the Feebes familial ties, and a watch. Think of it like one of David Mitchell's books, but more grounded.
I wasn't sure what to expect from this novel, it's my first Lavie Tidhar novel, and I'd only been vaguely aware of his sci-fi novel before this. And you know what? It was very good. It somehow encompasses many genres in one, but it doesn't at all feel laboured. Family drama, Agatha Christie mystery, espionage - it has it all! I felt a connection with each individual in the novel. Maybe somebody smarter than me has some commentary about the legacy of inherited wealth.

This is the first time I've read anything by Lavie Tidhar and these short stories are wonderful. Sweeping different genres and times, I highly recommend.

This novel stands as a powerful testament to the author's ability to vividly capture the spirit of diverse eras and the human struggles within them. We encounter a mid-level law clerk in a 19th-century banking conglomerate, a young Irish woman battling the hardships of her time, a man swept into international espionage, a Soviet spy navigating post-war Cairo, an Egyptian woman rising from the slums to stardom, and a 20-year-old Gen Z searching for meaning in the modern world.

As always, the author’s writing shines. The research behind each character’s life is impressive, reflecting both the breadth and depth of the author’s talent. The witty, fluid dialogues and flawed yet relatable characters create an immersive reading experience. By capturing micro-moments in people’s lives, the novel brings the last 200 years of history to life uniquely and fascinatingly. Echoes of Adama and Maror resonate in the writing style, emphasizing the author's belief that history is truly shaped by the lives of ordinary people.

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This is pretty light fare for Lavie Tidhar after his last two twisty Israeli historical epics. Six Lives is exactly that, slices of six character stories, ranging from 1855 - and the tale of a British Guano exporter, to 2012, with a young aimless heiress (and said guano dealer great-great-great granddaughter - sorta) dealing with a death in the family. In between we take in a blackmailers photographer in pre-civil war Ireland, an English country house mystery in 1933, a Russian spy in 1964 Cairo and an aspiring actress from the Egyptian trash heap who falls into cheapo Italian film in 1987. The tales are all tangentially linked, characters from one are often the children of characters in the other (usually illegitimate), a gold watch gets passed to the lead in each of them and they all have some connection to the moneyed British family the Feebes, who start off in guano import but soon become bankers, traders, and money launderers. Indeed one of the many themes of the book is the link between the respectable and the revolutionary, the Feebes are often involved in laundering money and dodgy colonial exploitation, whilst our leads are often on the edge of history (one of our leads latterly defects as a Russian spy, another blackmails for the Republican cause). Whilst at its heart it is a collection of short stories with some mild connective tissue, each story works well as a standalone and there are definite attempts to dress each up in the clothes of a different genre.

This is certainly not a new approach for Tidhar, many of his books have taken a disjointed and multi-character approach to storytelling, getting at the heart from different angles. However the approach in Six Lives is laid open from its title, and unlike Maror or Adama (his most recent non-science fiction books), there doesn't really seem to be a central narrative to approach. The genre experimentation becomes clear too from the section headings (the third story is actually called "The Country House Murder", and it's almost as if his publisher has asked him to do what he always does, but to dumb it down a bit. Maybe it is moving away from the topic of Israel, or maybe that central theme is too big (old British financial institutions get their fingers everywhere / life is weird). I enjoyed Six Lives as a read, each story was enjoyably bite-sized enough and Tidhar really does draw great characters. But I don't think it will linger as a whole piece like some of his others which I grappled with more - perhaps this goes down too easy.

I particularly enjoyed the first four stories. The fifth set in Cairo was interesting for its insight into the political history of Egypt in the 1970s and 1980s but I couldn’t warm to the angst of Isabelle, the subject of the sixth story. Having said that there are some clever touches in this final story such as the bookshelf of Isabelle’s adopted mother, Henrietta, which contains volumes with titles that relate to the previous five stories. And there’s an object that appears in each story, handed down the generations sometimes purposefully, sometimes accidentally.

Each story skilfully evokes the milieu of the period. The first set in mid-nineteenth century Peru is particularly notable for the amount of historical detail, meaning I learned more about the trade in guano than I ever thought possible. And I had no idea there was such a thing as memento mori photography which features in the second story. The third, written in the style of a ‘Golden Age’ murder mystery complete with country house setting, a brutal murder, a range of characters (including an Agatha Christie-like author of detective stories) and lots of possible motives, was the most entertaining. I imagine the author having a lot of fun writing this one, ticking off one trope of the genre after another.

It’s possible to detect several themes in the book. One is the value to be found in detritus, such as the guano which is the source of Feebes family’s prosperity – ‘the birds rained excrement upon those lonely outcrops of rock, and their shit turned to gold’ – or the intelligence material that KGB agent Vasily Sokolov harvests from the discarded papers of foreign embassies. Neatly, the film which makes actress Mariam Khouri a star is entitled ‘Black Dirt’.

Another theme is the consequences of actions and the moral choices people make. For example, the guano traded by Feebes & Co is used not only as fertiliser but increasingly for manufacturing munitions. And the Chinese workers who dig the stuff and load it onto waiting ships are pretty much slave labour, their lives merely an entry in a profit and loss account. Ironically, it is the Chinese from whom Edward Feebes obtains the supplies of laudanum he has become reliant on. These consequences become part of the inheritance of those who come later, often unaware their good fortune may have been earned through the suffering of others.

Even if I warmed to some of characters more than others, there’s no doubting the storytelling ability of the author. And who can resist chuckling at an absurd sentence like, ‘Rain rained and snails snailed and squirrels squirrelled squirrelly things‘. I enjoyed coming across the little connections between the stories, especially the ones that could easily pass you by. I was thoroughly entertained by Six Lives which I think demonstrates the author’s versatility, mastery of detail and sly humour.

Interesting concept where multiple lives are interconnected. The varying genres in each life/story is enjoyable both some are better formed and stronger stories as a result.

Six Lives tells the stories of six characters from the 19th century to 2012. They each have some connection to the Feebes family and their extractive business which spans the globe and the eras of the novel. Each story also reflects a popular genre of its period, including a country house murder and a Cold War thriller.

It’s an engaging read – I’ve been reading a lot of 19th century fiction recently so I particularly enjoyed the story of Edward Feebes, who is trying to make his name in his wealthy uncle’s business and goes to Peru to oversee their guano mining enterprise. There are some nice period details and the horror of the lives of the indentured workers is vividly portrayed.

I also liked the story of a Russian spy in Cairo, though the country house mystery left me cold. (The country house mystery is such an obvious target for parody that I feel it rarely works, I even found Lawrence Block’s Bernie Rhodenbarr version disappointing).

A key device throughout the novel is the handover of an old pocket watch. This is first done by Edward Feebes in a way which is so contrived it must be playful, but even so I’m not sure what the purpose of it is.

This is where Six Lives falls down for me. I either want the stories to be immersive and involving or the ideas and the connections thought-provoking (ideally both, of course). I didn’t quite feel either. I got to the end and wondered what the point was (capitalism bad, I guess, but beyond that?). There is an epiphany of sorts for the final character but it’s not really big enough to justify the whole book.

Like a country house mystery (or a cheap pocket watch), all the moving parts work, and it’s fun working out the connections between the characters in the different periods. I just feel I wanted a bit more.

Lavie Tidhar, better known for his speculative fiction, has recently branched more into historical fiction. His two books Adama and Maror focus on the modern history of Israel but his latest book Six Lives takes a much broader view, ranging across the world and over 150 years of history. It is a collection of six, connected short stories, each told in a different style, loosely following a single family and various people who come in contact with them over that time.
The first story is set in 1855, and follows Edward Feebes, junior member of a London trading family, who is sent to Lima to investigate issues with the highly lucrative guano trade. The next story jumps to 1912 and focusses on Edward’s illegitimate daughter Annie, who lives in Ireland and works for a photographer and blackmailer and dreams of escape to America. The third story moves to 1933 and is country house murder mystery at the Feebes estate (complete with Agatha Christie-style mystery writer on board) and involves Annie’s son Edgar (although he was given away as a baby and does not know his connection). The style flips again in 1964 to become a spy story focussing on Russian in Cairo who moves in the expat society which also includes Henrietta, a Feebes heiress. The fourth story, set in 1987 is a rags to riches story of Mariam who rises from the Egyptian slums to become a global movie star. And finally 2012, to Isabelle Feebes, Henrietta’s adopted daughter dealing with her stepmother’s death.
There are many many connections between these stories. Characters who age and then come in and out at different points, descendants of characters from earlier stories. And it feels like what Tidhar is trying to do with these stories is touch on some of the key turning points of the last century and a half. Whether it is British trading power and the opium trade of the 19th century, or the voyage of the Titanic, or the British double agents in MI5, or the rise of Irish nationalism. And he does son through a rolling, interconnected cast connected through the Feebes family which seems to stay rich no matter what is happening in the world.
The aspect that lets Six Lives down is that despite its precis of world events, and its playful use of form, it does not seem to actually be about anything. That is to say, there does not seem to be a connecting idea between these particular characters and these particular times and places. Sure they are all interesting in and of themselves and readers will encounter recurring characters or their descendants but it does not seem ot lead anywhere. This in contrast to Adama and Maror which were both very pointed novels with a specific point of view and something to say.
All this to say that Six Lives is a well written and engaging series of six linked short stories. But the stories need to resonate, and having characters in later stories channel some of the emotions or challengers of earlier characters is not so sufficient. So that in the end Six Lives does not rise up to be more than the sum of its parts.

I persevered through the first life of the six, which took up a fifth of the book – more than its fair share, though I suppose that's fitting for a Victorian gentleman. I waited in vain for it to do more than play out familiar scenes of moralising hypocrites, the evils of colonialism and capitalism, nature in decline, and that old, obvious metaphor of a fortune founded in shit. I hoped the second life might start to show some kind of cumulative effect at least, because after all, I do normally like Tidhar – but after one chapter of equally familiar material from Ireland in 1912, I was out. Meaning I can't say whether it all works out in the end, but it didn't feel like a good use of my limited span to stick around and find out.

(Netgalley ARC)

In Six Lives, Lavie Tidhar has produced a literary version of six degrees of separation: the people in the stories are connected but separated enough by time and sometimes distance that each stands alone. First we meet stuffy, of-his-time Edward Feebes, a Victorian accounts clerk working in the family business – Peruvian guano; this part reminded me of William Boyd’s The Romantic. Next is Annie Connolly, a determined woman who strains against expected norms without it feeling too anachronistic. ‘All I do is listen to men talking’, she thinks at one point. Oh I hear you, Annie.
I knew Lavie Tidhar wrote prodigiously, across genres, and in Six Lives he gives a virtuoso display of different styles and perspectives all in one place. He adjusts the narrator to each subject and is equally good at writing women as men; the same cannot be said for even the most lauded male writers. He’s even managed to concoct and dispatch a country house murder, in just a sixth of a book. I warmed to some characters more than others so when I encountered one I really liked, and wanted to follow them further, the format was disappointing. But as each was revealed, I could see how not only the principal characters are connected, but the secondary ones too. Clever stuff.

This book tells the story of six generations of people, connected by the threads of history. Or I could say it tells 6 stories. And that's where I found some frustration. It's a clever concept, cleverly done with the links between the time periods both obvious and subtle. But it's trying a little too hard to be conceptual, rather than just a novel. I found that, almost as soon as I found myself sinking into the plot of one of the stories it was over and I had to work out the next story. I was pulled out of the reading experience looking for the clever links between stories. All that said, this book is cleaver and interesting and the (final) ending tied it all up satisfactory. That said, I wanted something more - but I think that longing says more about me as a reader than Lavie Tidhar as a writer.
Thanks to NetGalley and Head of Zeus publishers for providing me with a DRC in exchange for an honest review.

I was better aware of Tidhar as an author of science fiction (although I had never read any of his books up until now), but this is a straight realist-historical novel. Following, sometimes up close and sometimes from a distance, the fortunes of the Feebes banking family, it spans from 1855 to 2012, jumping decades between each section and focusing on a new protagonist each time, who, we come to realise, is connected to the Feebeses in some way. As far as technical accomplishment and reading enjoyment goes, I can't complain about Six Lives at all: it's unbelievably readable, each section engrossing. The sections break down into different genres—historical saga, spy thriller, Golden Age murder mystery—but I think this has perhaps been overstated by reviewers; the tonal and genre distinctions between sections are nowhere near as clear-cut as in, e.g., Calvino's If on a winter's night or Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. All the characters are worth spending time with, even those we discover are surprisingly unpleasant (Edward Feebes, a banking clerk in 1855 sent to Peru to protect Feebes interests there, for example) or lack much agency (Edgar Waverley, socially ambitious but without a title, whose experiences form the core of the country house mystery in 1933, and who is railroaded into recruitment for both the British Secret Service and the socialist cause because of what happens there. Edgar is a fascinating character, actually; you see, in the next section, what has become of him, and though part of the power comes from the sideways approach, I would happily take a whole novel about Edgar).

My main issue with Six Lives is its mode: in short, I don't understand what this book is striving to be, as a piece of "realist" litfic, other than the sum of its parts. Books don't have to be more than the sum of their parts, but ambitious and creative ones usually want to be. I think Tidhar wants Six Lives to be, but it's not at all clear in what direction. There is plenty in it about the corrupting power of money, about how real power is to be found in the subtle ways that money permits some people to change the course of other people's lives, and if Six Lives has a point, that's probably it. But it says nothing about our options: if money and power corrupt, what is there to be done about it? Can you ever work against that system, in or outside of it? Can you ever use it to your own advantage, and if so, for how long? Those are questions that Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, for example—for all its deep flaws—willingly engages with: characters who find themselves at the dawn of the invention of international finance try to fight it, try to use it, try to ride it up the ladder, try to ignore it, try to do all sorts of things with it. Tidhar's characters, in comparison, all seem peculiarly passive in the face of money. His skill is such that it hardly matters while you're reading the book, which takes you on a highly enjoyable tour of times and places, but it ultimately lessens Six Lives's memorability and power.

I'd only read short fiction by Lavie Tidhar when I got access to this ARC via NetGalley but I do have some of his books on my wishlist because he consistently seems to come up with interesting concepts.
Six Lives, as the name implies, consists on the exploration of the life and perspective of six people, living on subsequent times and impacted by what happened on the previous stories. The genre is fluid, from historical fiction elements to mystery and personal drama. There are three throughlines that are worth paying attention to in the book. The first is the most superficial and obvious, the influences of someone's choices not only in their own lives but on the lives of their descendants or close relations. The other is the exploration of what it is to live in the shadow of big money and the different relations that one can have with it and its people. The final and more interesting one is the idea of exploring and obtaining value from what others consider rubbish, despicable, forgettable. From guano exports to Cairo's trash, from irrelevant nephews to prostitutes and trash collectors, from disposable spies to directionless lives, how can we imagine, risk, try and achieve growth, worth, self-love? Through money, despite money or both? And by the end, even if you learn what you think is best, do you impose your view on others or is that in itself the privilege of money and power manifesting?
Tidhar's prose is simple and effective, the narrative is easy to follow, with a few moments where the words shine through and become quite quotable, though never pedantic. Six Lives is good book that can be really good if you allow yourself to read more than the page and digest the thoughts.

Besides what is written in the review (below), I could not quite connect with this book. Some parts of it, specially the last part, looked paint-by-numbers. It failed to insert anything that made you want to turn the page; it took me longer than usual to read the book for this reason. It did not have enough literary appeal to actually enjoy writing, that was just correct.
Sorry to have to say this about my first book in NetGalley, but I guess that an honest review is what I signed for.

Six loosely connected stories about six loosely connected individuals spanning 200 years of human history. Each story is a great testament to the author's ability to capture the spirit of the era and convey the struggles of humans inhabiting it. We get to know a mid-level law clerk in a banking conglomerate in the 19th century, a poor young Irish woman trying to survive the hardships of her time, a young man who ends up embroiled in international spycraft, a Soviet spy trying to make the most of his posting in post-war and post-Stalin Cairo, a young Egyptian woman carving her own fate from the slums of Cairo to the silver screen, and, finally, a 20-year-old Gen-Z struggling to find purpose and meaning in life.

As with most of the author's work, I genuinely enjoyed the writing here. The research going into each "life" is exemplary, and shows the breadth and depth of the author's talent. The dialogues are witty and flow easily, and the characters are difficult to not sympathise with, because of, and not despite, their flaws. The monumental task of describing the history of the last 200 years is brought to life in these micro-moments of people's lives, and this is what indeed makes the novel unique and fascinating at the same time. There are echoes in this from both Adama and Maror - in style if not in substance. The author's belief that history comes to life via the simple people that it happens to is dominant here as well.

I liked the book a lot, and would recommend it wholeheartedly to both fans if historical fiction, and the author's non-speculative-fiction work. There is something in this book for nearly everyone. The only thing that makes this book, in my view, inferior to both Adama and Maror is the dryer delivery. It's almost as if the author's soul was not truly in it. It felt like an intellectual exercise, and less a soulful and emotional one. If I hadn't read the other two books I would have felt different, perhaps. However, knowing the depth of emotion that the author's writing can convey and elicit in a reader, this book came across as more sterile, in that sense.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book in return for an honest review.

I'm afraid, for me, this book simply lost its way towards the end. It followed a perfectly linear timeline and all the stories made perfect sense I just found that once we reached the fifth life - that of Mariam - I got really bored with the story and didn't really care what happened or how it fit in with the Feebes family.

The start of the book was, however, really interesting and the descriptions of Peru and the political/social scene was really captivating as was the following family history bringing in the Irish family/history and the spies. I did find the murder mystery somewhat strange but realise it was a means to an end although I found every character having a name beginning with the letter E very distracting and confusing.

Overall it was a decent book and the writing was good. The premise was interesting but the characters simply didn't grab my imagination towards the end of the book.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Head of Zeus for the advance review copy.

Excellent.
This book can be read on two levels: merely as a set of great interlinking stories, hugely entertaining, because the characters and their lives are so interesting; but also, in typical Tidhar fashion, as tongue-in-cheek homage to 6 different literary genres, with layer upon layer of meaning, and multitudes of appropriate references to each era and genre.
Tidhar is, amusingly, quite ruthless; the "historical saga" that the book opens with is a pointed dig at most other examples of this genre, which are usually replete with unending detail. In his signature bare prose (sometimes as abrupt as that of an 8-year-old), Tidhar dispenses with all dross, and yet manages to paint an evocative picture of the surroundings of 1855 Lima.
The country house mystery was far, far from cosy, indeed, quite stressful, and the outcome was, again, completely at odds with the works of any of the Golden Age authors.
The other stories and genres were just as cleverly transposed, but I did have a bit of an issue with Annie's story, which, while good in itself, lacked veracity (I know, they are all based on fictive approaches, but still!). Over 100 hundred years later, with abortion now legal in Ireland, it's still practically impossible to get this service in the country; the only people who might have had access to such things at that time would have been either Protestants or the absolute dregs of Dublin slums (as the only city worth the name at the time). The former situation would actually have provided a nice complication in the plot, and a deeper exploration of both Annie's character and the times.
I felt an undercurrent of tension throughout the book, an almost subconscious dread, which was weird, as most of the stories were fulfilling in themselves. I think this was intentional on the part of the author, underscoring the existential theme of the book, the exploration of whether we are bound by our ties to the past, through blood or other connections, or whether we can ever escape it - and, if we do, are we going to enmesh others in our own web of connections?
Finally, I think Tidhar is possibly a victim of his own brilliance - the research, literary allusions and intricate web of connections are all superb, but maybe the one thing, despite the heavy philosophical questions, and the good old narrative arcs that the characters enjoy, that this book lacks, is heart. But maybe you can't have it all. Certainly this is a great read, and one to which I will be returning.

As the name implies, Six Lives contains 6 interconnected stories, featuring six main characters.
Pros: The variety of genres and themes (although, some themes overlap), the liberty of reading these stories independently, the time settings.
Mariam’s story was the one that I have enjoyed the most content wise, and I found the prose of The Heiress much more enchanting than some others’.

Tracing the tributaries of family and kinship over centuries

Six Lives does exactly what it says on the tin, following six lives in one loose-knit family, by blood and as found family, moving from mid-Victorian colonial trade to twenty-first century nepo baby, with a familiar cast of characters cropping up in each of the six time periods, and recurring themes of grief and loss, parents and children. and the vagaries of time.

Each section is well-defined against the rest, with vibrant central characters that fair leap off the page and enough detail to fill a book of its own. There's also lots of story in the interstices within and between each strand, not quite a collection of short stories and more like a roman fleuve but without the length. The geography in each strand is brilliantly realised, the landscape as much a function of the narrative character as it is a backdrop; taking in colonial Peru. early twentieth century Cork, a Home Counties manor, mid-century Cairo, Eighties Rome, and twenty-first century NYLON.

I'm still not sure what to make of it. Well-crafted, the characters fascinating and grotesque in equal measure, but I'm still waiting for the shoe to drop.

Interesting: four stars.

Another excellent novel by Lavie Tidhar. I love the unexpectedness of Tidhar’s books and this one has the added bonus of six stories with six different genres, yet all of them linked.