Six Lives

by Lavie Tidhar

SIX LIVES
Six lives, connected through blood and history, each rooted in the dirt of their inheritance, look to the future, and what it might hold.

THE GUANO MERCHANT
In 1855, Edward Feebes travels to the guano islands of South America, to investigate an irregularity in the accounts of the House of Feebes & Co.

THE BLACKMAILER
In 1912, post-mortem photographer and reluctant blackmailer Annie Connolly plots her escape from Ireland to America on board the Titanic.

THE IDEALIST
In 1933, idealistic Edgar Waverley faces a choice of the heart when he becomes embroiled in a country house murder.

THE SPY
In 1964, hapless KGB agent Vasily Sokolov makes his career conjuring valuable information from worthless detritus.

THE MOVIE STAR
In 1987, actor Mariam Khouri looks back at 'Black Dirt', the movie that lifted her from the streets of Cairo.

THE HEIRESS
In 2012, Isabelle Feebes attempts to break with her poisonous heritage once and for all. Can she forge a new life for herself in the New World? Can you ever truly escape your past?

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction

464 pages, Hardcover

First published August 29, 2024

About the author

Lavie Tidhar was raised on a kibbutz in Israel. He has travelled extensively since he was a teenager, living in South Africa, the UK, Laos, and the small island nation of Vanuatu.

Tidhar began publishing with a poetry collection in Hebrew in 1998, but soon moved to fiction, becoming a prolific author of short stories early in the 21st century.

Temporal Spiders, Spatial Webs won the 2003 Clarke-Bradbury competition, sponsored by the European Space Agency, while The Night Train (2010) was a Sturgeon Award finalist.

Linked story collection HebrewPunk (2007) contains stories of Jewish pulp fantasy.

He co-wrote dark fantasy novel The Tel Aviv Dossier (2009) with Nir Yaniv. The Bookman Histories series, combining literary and historical characters with steampunk elements, includes The Bookman (2010), Camera Obscura (2011), and The Great Game (2012).

Standalone novel Osama (2011) combines pulp adventure with a sophisticated look at the impact of terrorism. It won the 2012 World Fantasy Award, and was a finalist for the Campbell Memorial Award, British Science Fiction Award, and a Kitschie.

His latest novels are Martian Sands and The Violent Century.

Much of Tidhar’s best work is done at novella length, including An Occupation of Angels (2005), Cloud Permutations (2010), British Fantasy Award winner Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God (2011), and Jesus & the Eightfold Path (2011).

Tidhar advocates bringing international SF to a wider audience, and has edited The Apex Book of World SF (2009) and The Apex Book of World SF 2 (2012).

He is also editor-in-chief of the World SF Blog , and in 2011 was a finalist for a World Fantasy Award for his work there.

He also edited A Dick and Jane Primer for Adults (2008); wrote Michael Marshall Smith: The Annotated Bibliography (2004); wrote weird picture book Going to The Moon (2012, with artist Paul McCaffery); and scripted one-shot comic Adolf Hitler’s I Dream of Ants! (2012, with artist Neil Struthers).

Tidhar lives with his wife in London.

Reviews

[Kate O'Shea · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Alex Sarll]

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)

[Halina]

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.

[Dima · Rating 4 out of 5]

Six loosely connected stories about six loosely connected individuals spanning 200 years of human history. Each story showcases the author’s remarkable ability to capture the spirit of its era and the struggles of the people living through it. We meet a mid-level law clerk in a 19th-century banking conglomerate, a poor young Irish woman fighting to survive her harsh circumstances, a young man drawn into the world of international espionage, a Soviet spy making the most of his posting in postwar, post-Stalin Cairo, a young Egyptian woman rising from the city’s slums to the silver screen, and finally, a 20-year-old Gen-Z searching for meaning and purpose in life.

As with much of the author’s work, the writing is exceptional. The research behind each “life” is meticulous and highlights the breadth and depth of the author’s talent. Dialogue flows naturally and wittily, and the characters are easy to empathize with—because of, not despite, their flaws. The monumental task of depicting two centuries of history comes alive through these intimate vignettes of ordinary lives, making the novel both unique and compelling. There are echoes here of Adama and Maror—in style if not substance—and the author’s belief that history is best told through the everyday people who live it is once again at the forefront.

I greatly enjoyed this book and would wholeheartedly recommend it to fans of historical fiction and of the author’s non-speculative work. There is something here for nearly everyone. The only reason I rank it slightly below Adama and Maror is its drier tone—it feels more like an intellectual exercise than a deeply emotional one. Perhaps if I hadn’t read those two masterpieces, I wouldn’t feel that way. But knowing the emotional depth the author is capable of, this book felt a touch more restrained, almost sterile by comparison.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Peter Baran · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Peter Hollo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The guy can write. He really can.
Each of these six lives is different in almost every way, each novella of varying length and each written as a different genre - or at least an homage to a different genre. But of course each story is in conversation with the previous, the referentiality increasing until the last story, and its protagonist who in a strange way brings all the previous ones together.

What's it about? Well, it's about colonialism - although not as heavily as I thought it might be. It's about people, different people living very different lives and pushed around by the world in very different ways - or pushing the world around, some of them. And how? Well, it's the money. It's very much about money. But even so, any strong narrative theme is deftly avoided. A lot's going on in the background, hinted at or told by not being told. But each of these characters - far more than the six lives at the centre - is drawn with humanity and love, I feel.

That's what kept me reading, anyway - that and Lavie's writing, which never fails to thrill.
In the end, the thread that ties these lives together is a cheap fob watch which is passed from protagonist to protagonist, and maybe that's a clue: what this book is about, above all, is time. Time, which brings change; time, the great leveller. Time which brings or dashes every person's hopes and dreams (another theme is of women wanting to escape their birthplace, whether they succeed or not).
Anyway. A beautiful read.

[Ben Dutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Eleanor]

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. Sometimes up close and sometimes from a distance, it follows the fortunes of the Feebes banking family 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 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 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. Source: NetGalley

[Kate Hyde · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Kate Vane · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.
*
I received a copy of Six Lives from the publisher via NetGalley.

[André · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Juan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got early access to this book via NetGalley, so there’s that.
The book is conceptually interesting and well written. It weaves the lives of six persons, from the late 19th century to our days, all of whom own a pocket watch that’s engraved with “Feebes”; somehow, all these persons end up tying their fates to the House of Feebes, a family that started as guano merchants, the topic of the first of the six lives, and eventually become bankers. Old money, that starts with bird shit, and goes… somewhere. What happens to the family is not the main topic, what occurs to the Irish photographer (second life), the British dilettante, the Russian spy, the Egyptian B-movie star and finally the rebel heiress.
The problem is that neither of these stories amount to much more than set scenes. There is no arch, other than names like Doyle or Steinmeyer popping up here and there; also some hints that the ending of the story of one of the previous lives might not seem what we think. But those revelations fell a bit flat, they do not solve any plot point, or release any tension. There’s very little tension in any of the scenes either. The story of the Russian spy starts at the end, and there is some interest in knowing how it got there. But the solution is not very satisfactory.
Lavie Tidhar is known for his science fiction novels; most I have read are good at world building, and have interesting characters. Spreading character building over 6 short stories does not enable that skill. Only thing that remains is the House of Feebes… and the gold watch. But it is impossible to empathize with a piece of machinery.

[Mandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This started so well, but then it was downhill all the way. The premise is a good one. Six lives connected through family and inheritance from 1855 to 2012, a sprawling family saga covering times and places across the world. The Feebes family is at the heart of the story. (An aside – what a peculiar name – where did it come from?) Each of the six stories are completely self-contained and can in fact be read as disparate narratives. The first story is set in Peru and that is the one that drew me in. It’s an interesting tale about guano harvesting in Peru, and chronicles the beginnings of the Feebes family fortune. But the later episodes fell short for me. One in particular irritated me, a pastiche of the country house murder mystery, and the spy narrative that followed isn’t much better. I can see that Lavie Tidhar is playing with literary genres, but it doesn’t really come off, because the stories aren’t inherently interesting, and nor are the characters, who are largely stereotypes. The historical details are well researched, and the idea of kinship going down through the ages is well handled. There are some clever links – from the guano of Peru to the rubbish heaps of Cairo – and a watch that is handed on from character to character is a nice conceit. However, the sum of the parts doesn’t add up to a satisfactory whole, and I didn’t find the individual stories (apart from the first) compelling or immersive enough to keep me invested. There’s no real narrative arc, so it all finally just comes to an unsatisfying halt.

[Anne O'Connell · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.
Thanks to Head of Zeus for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley.

[Haxxunne · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Sharondblk · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Ido · Rating 4 out of 5]

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’.
Thank you #netgalley and #headofzeus for the ARC.

[Annarella · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm huge fan of Lavie Tidhar and was excited by what I read in the blurb.
It's a mix of very intriguing and flatter story, it starts strong and drags a bit at the end.
It's a good novel and I loved the initial stories and the one in Cairo.
Lavie Tidhar is an excellent storyteller as usual
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

[Shannon Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprising it is not my usual genre, I really enjoyed it!