SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY
The Many Lives of Heloise Starchild
John Ironmonger
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2020
Hb, 276pp, £16.99, ISBN 9780297608233
Heloise was born in 1759, when Halley’s comet was in the sky; her father, a French nobleman and astronomer, named her after the god of the Sun. Her family are caught up in the horrors of the French Revolution. Katya was born in 1952 in Czechoslovakia. In her dreams she has detailed memories of her multiple-greatgrandmother Heloise’s life, and of all her matrilineal line in between. The present day of much of John Ironmonger’s is Katya’s story, from her childhood, through the brutal suppression of 1968, and her eventual escape from Czechoslovakia to go in search of the treasure that she has
