The Many Selves of Katherine North

I loved this book from the very first page. It's beautifully written and a fascinating exploration of a possible near-future world in which we can truly find out what it's like to be another species. Philosophical and ethical questions about ourselves and our relationship to the world around us combine with some very heartfelt, human concerns and a plot that keeps you turning pages.

Wonderful book!  Couldn't put it down.  Novel idea!  Green's voice is like poetry.

I initially didnt start to read this book as I thought it was about people becoming animals... for me talking animals belong only in kids cartoons!  

I am so glad I did change my mind and read it as this is an unforgettable book!

The story focuses on Kit a 19 year old phenomenaut whose job is to have her consiousness 'jumped' into specialy printed animals in order to study and research certain traits to be used for commerical, scientific etc purposed.

No spoilers so in summary the story follows Kit as she fleses/fights against the company she works for interspaced with flashback to how Kit found herself in her current situation.  Is the company against her?  Have her friends betrayed her? Not everything is as it seems...

This is a remarkable book with a unique concept - the author interweaves a a tale of suspense, science fiction, love, psychology amongst fascinating adventures into the animal kingdom as Kit 'becomes' the creature she has jumped in to.  

The author adds a disclaimer at the end that she is not a zoologist BUT wow... her use of language and description really does make the reader feel that they are in the mind of the animal along with Kit.

I found Kit mildly annoying but Im not sure if this was deliberate - Kit has grown up through her teenage years in a schizophrenic clinical v nature environment and so it would be natural that her development as a grown up may be stalled at sulky, self absorbed teenager.  

I would highly reccommend this book and will be reading more from this author in future.

When you pick up The Many Selves of Katherine North it is not, as I expected, a thriller of any sort. The description made me think that Katherine was going to uncover a horrid secret and have to struggle to reveal it to the world. Well, that happens, but not in the way that I expected. Instead, readers are treated to a very creative and intellectual novel that really showcases what writers can do in the science fiction genre. 

Emma Green has a background in psychology and philosophy, and this book definitely showcases her talent. It took me a while to realise that the book was a fascinating exploration of what could happen to a person's psyche if they were to engage in this type of animal body "borrowing", and that's actually a much more fascinating story than ye old generic thriller. Green spends a lot of time trying to show readers which it might be like to experience existence in so many different forms, and she very carefully weaves a story of the harmful effects this can cause. It's a haunting, melancholy, and contemplative work that has left me with a lot of ponder, and I'd definitely recommend for those who like a novel that makes them think!

One part speculative fiction, one part scifi thriller, The Many Selves of Katherine North is an imaginative novel that should not be passed by.   It is a story that will linger with readers long after the final chapter is read.

What lies at the core of identity?  Is it defined by body and sensation or something more?  If you could be another - whether animal or person, what type of insight into their experience could you gain?  The Many Selves of Katherine North explores these questions and many others within its pages.  At once beautiful and troubling, The Many Selves of Katherine North is a thriller that describes a technology with both a tremendous research potential and a potential for extreme danger and destruction.  The novel does not only look at self, it also asks what holds a sense of self together when body, when consistent physical and mental stimuli, are not present.

It is easy to empathize with Kit as her world starts coming apart, to understand her fear as well as her desperate need to keep jumping.  For Kit, identity is entangled completely in the act of becoming "other".  It is her own body that is alien.  Geen does a marvelous job of showing the beauty of being another, of experiencing life in full, whether as a fox, a tiger, an octopus, or a whale, while communicating clearly the awkwardness of being human.  The more I read, the less willing I was to put the book down.  I wanted to understand how Kit ended up on the streets, running and afraid.  I wanted to know what had happened at ShenCorp and if there was anything or anyone she could trust.  While Kit may not be the easiest person to understand, her hunger and yearning for safety and belonging, for understanding resonates in us all.      
Katherine North is a phenomenaut, an individual trained to project her consciousness into specially designed bodies (ressies).  The purpose of the technology is to gain a greater understanding of the lives and experiences of different species, ranging from the smallest insect to the largest mammal.  ShenCorp employs many youth as phenomenauts.  At 19, Kit is the oldest and most experienced phenomenaut, more at home in the ressies she embodies than in her human skin.  Her grasp on the human world is fragile, particularly after experiencing "death" as a fox.  After the tragedy, ShenCorp quickly shuttles her into another program, eager to make use of her face and reputation as a phenomenaut.  But as she jumps, Kit feels she is being watched.  More and more things go wrong, and she loses trust in her coworkers and surroundings.  Kit takes flight, desperate to survive and desperate to reveal the wrongs being done by ShenCorp.

5/5

I received a copy of The Many Selves of Katherine North from the publisher and Netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review.

--Crittermom
(5/27/16)

Speculative sci-fi meets psychology. Just how would it feel to experience life as another animal and what would it do to humanity if we could? And where else could could this ability take us? To strange dark places? Should we play God?Extremely clever and well written.

Fantastic breadth of description, not only does the author manage to describe the alien nature of being another animal but also captures the essence of human frailty. I was hooked right off the bat and thoroughly enjoyed the ups and downs of Kit looking for the answers that plague us all.

This is a beautiful piece of literary science fiction in the vein of Station Eleven and Never Let Me Go. It features a girl, Kit, who can jump into and out of animal consciousness. She works for a huge (and subtly shady) company who works in animal research.

The shining star of this novel are all of the animal life descriptions. They are equally beautiful and terrifying, and Emma Geen manages to capture the alien experience of animal lives so beautifully. The writing is so lush and you can really get lost in it.

Very unique story and extremely difficult to put down. Would recommend to anyone!

I was gripped from start to finish. Throughly enjoyed it

I loved the premise of this very original debut novel. Set at a time slightly in the future where climate change is threatening endangered populations of animals, humans have developed the ability to transfer their consciousness into 3D synthetic living breathing animals. This allows them to live as that animal for short periods and mix with wild populations to study their habitat and ability to find food. Teenagers are generally recruited for this research as their brains are most plastic and able to cope better with the shock of finding themselves inside the body of another species. At 19, Katherine North has been working as a 'phenomenaut' for seven years, longer than anyone else. She dreads the day she will be deemed too old to continue and reluctantly takes on a new role for the corporation which will allow her to continue.

I loved the descriptions of what it's like to find yourself inhabiting a different body - that of a seal, snake, spider, tiger and polar bear to name a few. I particularly liked Katherine's time as a fox living in an urban environment. The author's description of running and foraging with a young cub were evocative and the prose redolent of the scents and sensations they experience.

For the most part the book was interesting and Katherine's concerns about the activities of the corporation developed slowly seeding an element of disquiet into the unfolding story. However, once matters came to a head I found the jumps between three different time frames often difficult to follow and some textual markers would have been helpful. I also felt the ending didn't totally resolve the reason behind some of the events at the corporation.

Kit is nineteen years old, and she has been working for the research department of the Shen Corporation for seven years. Her research is conducted by projecting her consciousness into the bodies of lab-grown animals, and her youth is valued in the industry because she is more flexible at adapting to these animal bodies. She has had the opportunity to experience many different lives, seeing the world through the eyes of an octopus, an elephant and a spider, to name a few – but her most powerful connection has been to her fox self. When the fox body she inhabits is hit by a car and killed, Kit’s entire career is called into question.

Kit is a Phenomenaut, and she enters an animal body – called a ResExtenda, or Ressy – through a neurological interface. When she is inRessy, her only connection to the “real” world is her Neuro, named Buckley, who is able to communicate with her throughout the experience. He is her most trusted friend, the voice that guides her through her projections, so when she begins to doubt him, her whole world is called into question. Suddenly, Kit finds it hard to engage with her real body and begins to relinquish her humanity, becoming more animalistic in her behavior. The feeling that her original body is no longer hers feels like “insidious, chronic doubt.” (Loc. 1732) If she can’t trust Buckley, the voice that’s always inside her head, then she can no longer trust herself.

After the death of her fox Ressy, Kit is moved from research to tourism – the Shen Corporation is branching out, and they want to profit from sending regular people inRessy, for a very high price. Kit knows it isn’t right, but she has no choice. She feels that her purpose as a Phenomenaut is to study ecology and preserve endangered species, encouraging empathy for those who can’t speak for themselves. She compares Phenomenautism to reading fiction because it is “like wearing another skin,” and understanding how others think and feel. The corporate bureaucrats say tourism will create empathy too, but they have taken something almost magical and disguised it with double-speak. 

If you are able to suspend disbelief of the Phenomenaut technology, this becomes a really intriguing, philosophical story, exploring many ethically ambiguous issues. Because the Ressy bodies are essentially printed in a giant 3D printer, the next step becomes the printing of human bodies, which is morally questionable but somehow seems completely possible. I really appreciated that the author didn’t go overboard explaining the technology in detail – she gives us just enough to imagine the possibilities. She cleverly uses a classroom of children who are touring the facility to explain the Ressy experience – the science is dumbed down for the reader without interrupting the narrative flow. In my opinion, that’s what makes this speculative fiction instead of sci-fi – there is not as much science/world-building, but instead it is more of a framework used to express philosophical ideas about a potential future world.

Kit’s voice is so well developed that it easily carries her character seamlessly through each animal body – she is sharp, caustic and edgy, but at the same time her mind is thoughtful and authentic. She expresses herself with a maturity beyond her age, but it makes sense because she experiences so much empathy for her animal host bodies. The sections where Kit is inRessy are incredible – it’s hard to believe that the author hasn’t had these experiences herself. Seeing the world through the eyes of these diverse creatures is amazing, and I felt like I was completely immersed in their worlds. 

This is such a strong story in every way, especially for a debut novel. I could really see this as a movie in the same vein as “The Hunger Games” – it is young/new adult writing with a serious edge. Either way, I can’t wait to read whatever Emma Geen does next. She finishes the novel with a great disclaimer, reminding the reader that she is not a scientist, but that her research was extensive. She writes that “[s]cience permits only one truth, one reality. But what if there are other valid ways of knowing? What if the world is not one, but multitude, with as many ways of being as there are beings? What if literature were the opportunity to glimpse such refractions, thrown by the world as though from a diamond?” (Loc. 3789) This is the true purpose of literature, I think, and that is why this novel spoke to me so clearly. 

I received this novel from Bloomsbury Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Kit is a phenomenaut.  Via the Shen corporation her mind is projected into many different unusual and endangered species in an attempt to better understand the animals (and insects, fish, reptiles, invertebrates, …).  Like other phenomenauts, she is a teenager, but unlike the others, she has been at this a long time without wearing out.  She becomes the animal for the length of her shift, with all the attendant senses, feelings, fears and instincts, while reporting back sub-vocally to her engineer Buckley, whose job it is to monitor her physiological and psychological responses, and somehow keep her tethered to her humanity.   The imagery of her time spent projected into her many other selves is so vivid, that you can easily understand why Kit wants to keep “jumping”, and is more at home in something else’s skin than her own human skin:  “I wish the fox would come closer. I wish I could snuggle up to her like I would with Tomoko. But my stench is —- human, my face naked like a fox with mange”;  “Then there are the textures: a tickle of ground; scratch of evergreen; milk water, curling up into the froth of cloud.  The intensity threatens to swamp me, as if my feathered body might any second pop”.  The prose is wonderfully poetic:  “eyes like bullet holes, leaking inner light”, “my thoughts are a flurry of pages, I’m left clutching fragments”.  Much of the book is quite serious.  Kit is devoted to further understanding and protecting non-human species.  She has set herself a very clear moral code, and becomes quite distraught when she feels that her code is being sacrificed by the activities of ShenCorp.   But that is not to say that there is no humour I the book.  My favourite bit was when she projects for the first time into an octopus, and becomes very confused when the tentacles start to move independently from the octopus brain.  She copes with an hilarious monologue to the tentacles (my inserted ***):  “Leave the crab, leave the crab, leave the f***ing crab. Run. Run, you useless pieces of spaghetti. I’m doing this for, you know. That is just a pebble, get over it already. Will you drop the goddam crab!”  I loved this book for the story and for the language and for its incredible depictions of the secret lives of wild animals.  I do hope that Emma Geen writes more books like this.  It is an amazingly original novel that will grip you from the outset.