The Memory Police
Ratings276
Average rating3.7
This was much more interesting than I expected it to be, but at the same time I really wanted it to be more. I wanted to know what and why the forgetting was happening. Still, I found Yōko Ogawa's writing to be lyrical and haunting. It drew me in and I sucked in from the beginning.
Not even sure why I'm not giving it 5 stars. I almost, almost feel like making a vlog about it, so amazed I was by this book. It's called Orwellian, because of course there's the all seeing eyes of the Memory police, but there's so much more I could see... what I saw as almost archetypes, as the old man, the editor who was also someone who remembered, her mother who kept things in drawers and then inside sculptures, the attic... her job, her attitude. There's rhythm, and good one - when the memory police got closer I was biting my nails - and there's also so much sadness and the worst of society. And the things that disappeared... and the way they did... it was the first book I absolutely loved in a while, probably the first of this year, and there you go... you dig, and sometimes you find an emerald... (readers will get it).
If you can, try it out and let me know how it was for you. I was mesmerized.
3.75 stars I'm not sure how to rate this. The writing was beautiful and smart? but the ending was pretty anticlimactic and I have so many questions.
Without a doubt the saddest and most horrifying book I've read yet. It's also beautifully written. If you go in expecting an Orwellian dystopia story (as it is often described,) you'll enjoy it. But be warned: it goes to much darker, more tragic and existential places than most dystopian fiction.
Allegorically haunting
Themes of loss, death, and abusive relationships all swirl around the Orwellian-tinged Memory Police who enforce the rule: forget or suffer unspeakable consequence. Touching and haunting, the tale weaves in a story-within-a-story asking about the place that art has in the universe; will the story still exist when the mind that composed it has passed on?
Beautifully written, oddly dreamlike story about forms of loss. I can't really say more than that.
This is a beautifully written, poetic allegory about what happens when the government has a monopoly on the truth. Despite the deep strangeness of the story, all of the characters felt real and grounded, and the author clearly put a lot of thought into how a society with these constraints would work. The dark jokes characters make especially remind me of things I've read about living under totalitarian governments. I deducted one star because the main character has an extremely silly and kind of pointless romantic relationship, but other than that I loved it.
Want to give this a solid 3.5. The overall narrative and themes (authoritarianism, dystopia, 1984 etc etc etc) are well explored territory but this still felt like a fresh take. Something in the English translation felt a little too bluntly styled to me.
On a small island things are disappearing. At first, it's little things like perfume and ribbons, and, as the objects disappear, so do the islanders' perceptions of them. Gradually, more and more things disappear, big things, important things. Some people do not lose their memories of these things, and it is the Memory Police who are responsible for carrying these people off, too.
A young woman, a novelist, is our narrator, and she decides to save her editor, R., who retains his memories of the lost objects and is sure to be carried off by the Memory Police. R. tries to help the young woman regain her memories while he is in hiding in her home.
There is also a novel-within-a-novel, the story the novelist is writing. It's an interesting contrast to the novel itself.
The Memory Police is the sort of story I love, with odd things happening amid an odd world along with beautiful writing.
What an odd book. The premise sounds enticing enough: a dystopian novel in which in habitants of a large island have to endure government enforced “forgettings” of every day objects. It's a terrifying premise in one sense. On any day, the citizens may wake up to see that their memories of something have been erased and everyone has to destroy destroy all of those items. They are made to forget birds, perfume, ribbons, emeralds, boats, etc. The Memory Police also terrorize the island, destroying what remnants of these items remain, as well as arrest and round up the requisite dystopian resistance movement and those that, interestingly, have a genetic difference that keep them from succumbing to the “forgetting”.
Fascinating idea, right? That's about where the interesting parts end. However, the last few pages of the book get so weird, are so unexpected, and leave you in a state of shock it ALMOST makes the book's shortcomings seem more intentional and of a whole. But first, let's talk about it's issues.
The narrator is flat and two-dimensional. She speaks of her past and longings, but only as much as moves the story along. The types of things an ACTUAL human in such a situation would recall and muse about never arise. Has she ever had a romantic feeling or dalliance before the time we meet her? Has she ever had a job in this society other than the books she writes? What does she cook? What does she know of the history of the island, it's government, etc? We never know. We hear about her parents and her schooling–that's about it, and we spend the entire time in her head as she muses about the world in which she lives.
She repeatedly does things for which there is no prior indication she would ever do. In the beginning she seems an incredibly passive “keep your head down, don't rock the boat” kind of character, and then in a moment she's building a secret bunker underneath her house to hide families and friends in this underground movement. There's no growth or thought or moment of crisis, decision-making, or being pushed to this. It just... happens, and there's no subsequent reflection on it.
Every other character is only flatter. Her editor that she hides away is a married man and they begin sleeping with each other. Do they ever talk about how they rationalize it? Or do they feel ANYTHING about it? No. She has a line or two about “needing” someone in all the stress. But that's it. Is there any tension or romance? No. But it's also not purely mechanical as people's humanity is stripped away in such a society. It's just a thing that happens a few times.
The plot is even more difficult to get through. It is slow and unexciting, and there are moments that are supposed to be “exciting” but it tries too hard with weak prose to build tension, convey “action” and it falters. There are SO many massive logical gaps in the way this world is structured. Now, in a sci-fi dystopian set-up, I'm find with not everything being spelled out or having an answer. It's fine to have just one premise and play with it. But at least let that premise itself be thought out for more than a few minutes.
This book's plot is filled with every single of the mundane and boring dystopian novel tropes, with none of the exciting ones. It has an underground resistance, a secret room, a dead parent who left behind clues against the “regime”, a visit to the government headquarters, a party by dissidents which is broken up by an unexpected visit from the police, the “tense” police search of the residence while the character sees the one thing out of place that could give them up, the character that seems to know everything about this regime and how to fight it, but didn't let us know that until way too late in the book, people sleeping together because they're just around each other, caricatured “evil” government officials that are just one-note brutes that have no coherent philosophy about WHY the government does what it does. So and so forth.
The more interesting tropes are missing, though: fighting against the regime (she's hiding a “fugitive” in her basement, but for what end?), learning more about how the world became this way, meeting up with the resistance, experiencing the arrest of our heroes and ushering them into the inner workings of this society, finding out what happens to rebels, discovering what all these scientists are doing once they're invited to work for the government, enjoying a philosophical sparring match with government officials over life, society, and what makes us human?
I do need at, though, that there is an odd mechanic employed here of a “novel with then novel”, that is interesting in its own right, though not much more so. The narrator is writing this novel and there are portions of the book that are excerpts from what she's written. They're interesting at moments, but not enough to turn this book around.
That ending, though. Really, it's just the last few pages, but it's so haunting, it's still with me days after finishing this. My concern, though, is that it almost seems like the novelist had this premise and this end in mind, and then just did a bunch of filler to get us there. This could have easily been a fantastic short story. I do feel duped having read this. The premise is exciting enough that you're like, “oh wow, I've GOT to see what she does with this!”
It's just sad that the answer is an overwhelming, “oh wow, not that much.”
I was a little underwhelmed, to be honest. I didn't expect the outcome of the plot; I thought the book was a thriller.
Still, I liked the way the whole book played out, I guess. The only thing I didn't like though, was the beginning. It was too slow-paced for me.
Profoundly beautiful and depressing. The idea of collective government enforced dementia makes this one of the most frightening stories I've ever read. I felt the loss of several of the items disappeared. Novels and photographs were particularly difficult. I love the story within this story. I was so invested in the typist and was worried we wouldn't get closure after novels left. I love that no one had any actual name as if that was something that disappeared before we came into the protagonist's life.
There is this Japanese idea of “Mono no aware” or the “pathos of things.” How ephemeral beauty is, how everything is transient and fleeting - and the sadness that accompanies that realization. And that sentiment pervades the book as things disappear. Something in the air changes, and on waking the people stumble outside to understand what has been removed from their lives. One morning the rivers are covered in petals slowly floating out to sea as roses join hats, ferries, and birds as the thing that is gone. Soon the very memory of it disappears.
But then it takes a turn to the dystopian. Jackbooted thugs called Memory Police appear to ensure that newly forgotten thing is truly eradicated. They are there when novels are disappeared, stoking massive pyres of books, setting the library ablaze, ransacking homes looking for things that should be forgotten and carting away those that still remember.
And as it nears the end it takes on an absurdist tone that borders on the horrifying but is still presented in a calm, almost flat affect that pervades this particular translation.
It's such an open-ended read that defies easy categorization and that is both frustrating - I mean what's with the typewriter story? - and it's biggest strength. It allows for a myriad of interpretations that hinge on the personal. It is a story reflecting the Cultural Revolution, speaks to Trump's America, harkens back to sanctions against Yugoslavia and is a metaphor for social media and the very act of writing. Or maybe it's just my need to imbue the whisper quiet story with some larger narrative to explain its nagging persistence.
The memory police deletes objects from common knowledge. One day it's roses, the next day it's photographs. Everyone has to get rid of these objects and the police will hunt for any remains. And then people simply forget these objects every existed. But if you're special and you still remember, the memory police is out to get you too. The book reads like a big allegory. For the rituals and identities we lose, for the mindwashing culture and authority can execute, for how we accommodate around what harms us. And I still don't know what it really wanted to say. Because the book only stays on the surface, never gets into the nitty-gritty, of the how and why. Which is a fair style choice, but there is a neatness about Ogawa's writing, that I also ran up against when reading [b:The Housekeeper and the Professor 3181564 The Housekeeper and the Professor Yōko Ogawa https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1344313042l/3181564.SX50.jpg 3214322]. It's beautiful and calm, with attention to detail, like Japanese design. Ripples in a lake, never a storm.
‘'Long ago, before you were born, there were many more things here; my mother used to tell me when I was still a child. ‘'Transparent things, fragrant things...fluttery ones, bright ones...wonderful things you can't possibly imagine. It's a shame that the people who live here haven't been able to hold such marvelous things in their hearts and minds, but that's just the way it is one this island. Things go on disappearing, one by one. It won't be long now'', she added. ‘'You'll see for yourself. Something will disappear from your life.''
In an unnamed island, time passes quietly carrying the years of the islanders along the way. The years and the memories. Literally. Objects we all take for granted have disappeared. Ribbons, bells, precious stones, perfume, flowers, fruit. Objects and notions are being forgotten, along with feelings and thoughts. The elders of the community hide the secrets of the past in their eyes and hearts, unable to share them because the Memory Police are there to enforce the disappearances. Becoming more and more brutal, they persecute the ones who dare to react by preserving tokens of the lost objects or the citizens who are genetically unable to forget. The Memory Police want to create a community where every thought and feeling will have become a thing of the past, lost and forgotten until there's nothing left, until everyone is soulless.
‘'I wonder how the wind could tell the roses from all the other flowers.''
This is my first Ogawa novel and it proved to be one of the strangest, most haunting reading experiences. Behind the scenery of a form of a totalitarian regime, Ogawa presents issues that provide ample material for contemplation and discussion. What is the significance of Memory? How does it define the world we know? A ribbon is a ribbon because we know its name, we recognize its use. If we wake up one morning and decide that it is time to discard every ribbon we own, forget its existence and go on living, how will this change affect us? Once we forget every gift of Nature, every object mankind has created since the dawn of time, we will simply cease to exist.
‘'I sometimes wonder what I'd see if I could hold your heart in my hands.''
Ogawa creates a story/parable of disappearing notions and objects to refer to freedom of thought and speech, demonstrating the strong bond between our feelings and experiences and the way we perceive the world through our senses. We see an object, we smell a perfume, we listen to a melody and thoughts start flooding our mind. Without these stimuli, we are empty vessels. And this is exactly what regimes need. Empty moulds that have lost the ability to think and feel. Let us think of our past. Hitler and Stalin tried to create a ‘'clean sheet'' out of troubled societies, controlling everything. But Thought and Memory cannot be controlled. Not even by monsters.
Ogawa chooses not to name the country the story is set in. The heroine and the cast of characters remain nameless. Even the editor whom the young woman is trying to protect is simply called ‘'R''. This choice intensifies the haunting atmosphere and the universality of the themes. The main character is a very sympathetic, tangible woman. Sensitive, brave and determined to keep the spirit and the memory of her parents alive. She is a human being who thinks and feels, experiencing the dilemmas and fears of the one who tries to swim against the current, having lost her mother and father to the Memory Police.
‘'Autumn passed quickly. The crushing of the waves was sharp and cold, and the wind brought the winter clouds from beyond the mountains.''
In literary terms, this novel is quietly devastating. Haunting and atmospheric, its prose is hypnotic and unassumingly philosophical. The autumnal scenes and the long winter that seems to be unwilling to leave the island create a melancholic setting that makes the looming threat of the Memory Police a little more bearable. The scenes of the disappearing roses will make you cry. The dialogue is poetic and the extracts of the novel written by the main character add another dimension to the plot. Written 15 years ago, this novel has all the characteristics of Japanese Literature and succeeds in creating a Dystopian setting that is effective and terrifying. Most of the contemporary Anglo-Saxon wannabe-Dystopian writers could learn a thing or two by reading Ogawa's masterpiece. I doubt they will, though...
‘'I make my living now from my writing. So far, I've published three novels. The first was about a piano tuner who wanders through music chops and concert halls searching for her lover, a pianist, who has vanished. She relies solely on the sound of his music that lingers in her ears. The second was about a ballerina who lost her right leg in an accident and lives in a greenhouse with her boyfriend, who is a botanist. And the third was about a young woman nursing her younger brother, who suffers from a disease that is destroying his chromosomes. Each one told the story of something that had been disappeared.''
Many thanks to Pantheon and Edelweiss for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/
3.5
không hay như tưởng tượng hừm
vẫn là kiểu kinh dị yêu thích nhưng nửa sau thoại và cái kết sến quá nên không ấn tượng gì nữa, nhân vật mở đầu rất hay về sau vừa đọc vừa sốt ruột
chính ra cái truyện cô nhà văn nhân vật chính viết đọc lại thấy hay hơn cả, như thuộc về Revenge cái tập truyện mình rất thích
hay thời Revenge chính là peak về style này của cổ rồi :-?
This book works on a number of levels. A lot of other reviews pick up on the dystopian elements, and the authoritarianism of the Memory Police themselves, comparing the novel to Fahrenheit 451, 1984 or our own global lurch to the right, and that element is definitely there, but I found it resonated for me on a quieter, more personal level. Maybe due to circumstances in my own life, I couldn't escape the idea that the set up of the book is a metaphor for dementia, and the gradual erasure of self that brings about. It's full of lovely turns of phrase and poetic imagery (the rose petals in the river!), but it's an unsettling read, one that has lingered in my mind for several days after finishing.