Who Wants to Live Forever - Hanna Thomas Uose - ★★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Hanna Thomas Uose

NARRATOR: Lydia Wilson

GENRE: Speculative Literary Fiction.

PUBLICATION DATE: March 27, 2025.

RATING: 4.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A literary speculative-fiction novel coming from multiple characters and timelines. Innovative concept, thought-provoking exploration, excellent character-driven writing, slow pace. Can’t believe this is a debut! Much recommended but not to all. Don’t read the GR blurb.

Plot Preview:

2025, London. Yuki and Sam, both in their mid-to-late thirties, are just another ordinary married couple. Happy with each other, a bit bored with their routines, desperate to have kids but not successful yet. Yuki is an enthusiastic member of the local MP’s team and is passionate about causes. Sam is a slightly frustrated work-from-home graphic designer with ambitions of becoming a musician.

An American pharma company plans to introduce Yareta in the UK market. Yareta is a drug that can extend human life by at least 200 years and already successful in the USA. Yuki immediately joins the protest team. Sam thinks otherwise and considers taking the drug. Over this, their paths diverge.

The story comes to us from multiple decades – past, present, and near future going up to 2039 – and third-person perspectives from several diverse characters.

PSA: The GR blurb calls this a romance. It is not! A love story, yes, to some extent; a romance, definitely no. Also, the blurb contains a major spoiler about the ending.

The primary tag on Goodreads is Science Fiction, but this is more literary fiction with a dash of speculative.

Bookish Yays:

💊 The concept: believable and unbelievable at once. I still can't believe how true-to-life it all sounded even when the premise was so farfetched. Loved it!

💊 So thought-provoking in its exploration of the moral, ethical, political, corporate, societal, racial, and financial aspects of such an event! And all this without being melodramatic or hyperbolic. Wow!

💊 I love books that make me wonder what I would have done in that character’s place. And this book made me ask this question from many points of view.

💊 The plot doesn’t take an outright side on the debate, offering both sides of the picture convincingly. We hear from characters who've taken the drug and those who haven't. How their lives changed or didn't change, improved, worsened, or stayed the same. All character actions and reactions feel convincing, though we may not support all of them.

💊 The characters are diverse in various ways: racial background, sexual orientation, wealth, age. All of them act their age – a huge bonus. One character is of Indian origin, and I love how the story incorporated her ethnic background without making it the be-all-and-end-all of her personality.

💊 The story comes from three locations: London, Tokyo, and California. The varying thought process and attitude of the citizens reflects the places.

💊 A debut novel that doesn’t succumb to commercial constraints and handles plot, prose, and philosophy with equal prowess deserves acclaim.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

🧬 The complicated back-and-forth in the timeline. It is extremely well-written, with neat markers for all timeline changes. But keeping track is a bit tricky, especially as I had only the audio version.

🧬 While a slower pacing is anyway to be expected in a literary fiction work, a part of the final quarter seems a bit too dragged.

Bookish Nays:

💉 The ending. Can’t go into spoilers so all I’ll say is, 😥😣😒😤😳🤔😑😯🤯.

🎧 The Audiobook Experience:

The audiobook, clocking at 9 hrs 33 minutes, is narrated by Lydia Wilson. Technically, I found no flaws in Wilson’s narration or accents, but her voice took some time to grow on me as it was a bit too soft and subtle to keep me hooked. As it is, the plot has minimal dramatics, so an understated narrative voice made it sound even blander. Thankfully, the plotline was compelling enough for me to stick with the book.

That said, this was one complex book to follow on audio! Coming in third-person POVs from various characters, places and timelines (and the timelines being not just in years but with specific dates, and also shifting at regular intervals with phrases such as “Seven days later” or “Earlier that evening.”) This is definitely not a viable option for audio newbies. I’d recommend the audio only to the most experienced of listeners. While I am quite attuned to audiobooks by now, I feel that I might have appreciated this story even better if I had actually read it.

All in all, despite my dissatisfaction with the ending (not with “what happened” but with “how it was written”), I am quite impressed with this debut novel. Even with a speculative concept, the narrative stays firmly rooted in reality, never making us feel like this would never happen in the near future. (A scary thought, come to think about it!)

Much recommended to literary fiction readers who also enjoy speculative fiction. Not for readers who don’t like character-driven storylines or jumpy timelines or #&*$%#* endings.

What would you do if a life-extending drug is available to you? Think about your answer before you pick up this work.

My thanks to Octopus Audio and Brazen Books for providing the ALC of “Who Wants to Live Forever” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the audiobook.