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.

Lavie Tidhar's latest novel is a sweeping epic, which crosses centuries and continents. Each of its six sections details a different story, giving this the feel of six short stories, for although there is a family name which connects the stories, they can be read independently of each other.

If you are familiar with Tadhar's back catalogue, you will be aware he likes to switch genres, which is something he does with the stories here: there is historical drama, a 1930s murder mystery, a spy thriller and more. This gives this book a real sense of readability and unpredictability which I really liked - I was wondering where Tadhar would take his novel next. I ended up reading this in one sitting.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

Another wonderful book from Lavie Tidhar, sweeping you along in a family epic spanning continents and centuries.