The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

I read the first third or so of this book and then my reading was interrupted for about a week. I really wish I could have read it in one sitting. This is one of the best books I've read in quite a while.

My initial impression was that the premise is something like Replay by Ken Grimwood, or even like the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day. Everybody's seen the film Groundhog Day in which Bill Murray lives one day over and over and over and over, remembering the previous days and learning from them, and incorporating the repetition into his life scheme. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is a little bit like that except that it's lives, not days. When Harry August dies, he is born again into the same life, as the same little boy, except that he remembers his previous lives. Eventually he discovers that there are others like him - people who reincarnate as themselves, back into the year and circumstances in which they were first born. They are called ouroborans or kalachakra; they refer to people (like us) who live their lives just once as 'linears.' The ouroborans have established an organization they call the Cronos Club, through which they look out for one another. Members can pass messages forward and back through time - one generation talking to the next, or the previous. I found that an intriguing concept.

On his deathbed, Harry is told by a six-year-old girl, a girl from a later generation, that the world is ending and that the end is coming sooner and sooner. This is the crux of the story. And what a good story it is.