Book Blog #298: The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa

 

Title: The Memory Police

Author: Yōko Ogawa

# of Pages: 274 (hardback)

Genre: Adult, Science Fiction

Rating: ★★★★☆

Synopsis: On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses—until things become much more serious. Most of the island's inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.

Review: Despite a slow start, The Memory Police ended up being better than I expected. 

Although the material is adult, the writing style was simplistic. I am not sure if this is because of the translation, or if this is just how the book was written. The concept of people being able to just lose their memories was a hard one to wrap by brain around at first. While this got as I progressed through the book, there was some time skipping in the beginning between the protagonist's past and present, which was sometimes confusing. There is also skipping between excerpts of the novel the protagonist is writing and the main story, but this is less confusing after the first time it happens. 

While the concept is incredibly unrealistic and a lot of the "science" behind HOW people lose memories of certain things is not focused on, this is not the point of the book. Rather, it appears to be an extreme representation on how some governments encourage somethings to be forgotten. While governments/institutions are not yet able to enforce the kind of memory loss seen in this book (yet), they can suppress anything (or anyone) that makes people remember said thing, not that much unlike the Memory Police.

Overall, a thought provoking and even somewhat emotion-evoking book. It is not that long, so if you had a chance, it is a good read. I don't know if it would be my first choice, but I am definitely glad that I read it.