The Eternal Return of Clara Hart by Louise Finch
Book of the Week: 13 April 2025
Cover by Holly Pereira
Spence wakes up on the first anniversary of his mum’s death in his car in the school car park. As he registers how awful he feels, a girl called Clara Hart bumps into his car with her own and they have an argument. He meets his friends, Anthony and Worm, in the cafeteria where Anthony yells ‘banter’ at girls and talks about the party he’s throwing while his parents are away. Spence goes to his A-level Philosophy class, has a monsyllabic conversation with his dad once he gets home, and makes his way to the party. During the evening, when everyone has drunk too much, he goes upstairs when he thinks he hears Worm and Anthony behind the locked door of Anthony’s bedroom. When it’s opened, he catches a glimpse of a drunken Clara on Anthony’s bed, but he is quickly hustled away. Later, a distressed Clara stumbles downstairs, refuses a lift home and runs out into the road where she is knocked down and killed by a car.
The following day, Spence once again wakes up in the school car park and events repeat themselves, albeit with slight variations. He is stuck in a nightmarish time-loop where he tries desparately to alter the outcome and stop Clara Hart from dying.
This is not just a propulsive read with a cleverly constructed plot, but an exploration of issues such as consent, harassment, misogyny and grief. It is not an easy task to balance the repetiveness of a single day’s events with adding new twists, but Louise Finch succeeds admirably. The changes in viewpoint and the insights into characters keep us turning the pages and provoke a good deal of thought and hopefully discussion.
The book is suitable for older readers since the plot deals with sexual assault and uses some graphic language along with depictions of drug-taking and alcohol use.
