A haunting Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance, from the acclaimed author of The Housekeeper and the Professor.**
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.
A surreal, provocative fable about the …
**2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
A haunting Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance, from the acclaimed author of The Housekeeper and the Professor.**
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.
A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.
Skillfully melds the fear of living in an oppressive dystopia with the melancholy of the loss of memories and, first, the objects they're tied to. Tends towards feeling pretty dark, leavened only by the obvious love between the main characters.
The story was enjoyable enough which was good since there really isn't a massive underlying story going on. You do not get any answers as to what is going on. You are literally following the MC as she is experiencing things in her life disappear and you never know anything more than what she knows.
All the characters in this book are anonymous, no names are ever given, but it felt right and did not detract from being able to follow the story at all.
There is not some big "AH-HA" moment where everything clicks. For me, it came across that in the beginning, the MC is afraid of losing her editor/friend (who does not lose his memories) after having lost her parents. But on the flip side, her friend is watching her deteriorate bit by bit as the memories are taken from her and she begins to forget how …
The story was enjoyable enough which was good since there really isn't a massive underlying story going on. You do not get any answers as to what is going on. You are literally following the MC as she is experiencing things in her life disappear and you never know anything more than what she knows.
All the characters in this book are anonymous, no names are ever given, but it felt right and did not detract from being able to follow the story at all.
There is not some big "AH-HA" moment where everything clicks. For me, it came across that in the beginning, the MC is afraid of losing her editor/friend (who does not lose his memories) after having lost her parents. But on the flip side, her friend is watching her deteriorate bit by bit as the memories are taken from her and she begins to forget how to live. It's eerie because of how quickly and easily the forgetting is accepted, and there is an underlying tension through the entire book because at any moment, a memory can be erased.
Not one that I will have an interest in rereading again, but found it to be a good read.
I previously loved reading a collection of Yoko Ogawa's short stories, Revenge, so enthusiastically grabbed my copy of The Memory Police when it appeared on NetGalley. The novel was first published in Japanese twenty-five years ago and has only just been translated into English - an amazingly good job by the talented Stephen Snyder. The Memory Police is the novel that I had hoped If Cats Disappeared From The World would be - dark, mysterious, and, actual impossibility aside, scarily real.
Ogawa vividly portrays a science fiction dystopia where an island people have grown so used to abruptly being deprived of things that the loss of something more barely provokes a comment. Once deemed Disappeared, any surviving examples of an item are swiftly, voluntarily destroyed by the populace and once out of sight, these items are soon out of mind. The hatmaker retrains as an umbrella maker when hats Disappear. …
I previously loved reading a collection of Yoko Ogawa's short stories, Revenge, so enthusiastically grabbed my copy of The Memory Police when it appeared on NetGalley. The novel was first published in Japanese twenty-five years ago and has only just been translated into English - an amazingly good job by the talented Stephen Snyder. The Memory Police is the novel that I had hoped If Cats Disappeared From The World would be - dark, mysterious, and, actual impossibility aside, scarily real.
Ogawa vividly portrays a science fiction dystopia where an island people have grown so used to abruptly being deprived of things that the loss of something more barely provokes a comment. Once deemed Disappeared, any surviving examples of an item are swiftly, voluntarily destroyed by the populace and once out of sight, these items are soon out of mind. The hatmaker retrains as an umbrella maker when hats Disappear. The ferryman is employed as a night watchman when boats Disappear. The words themselves quietly fade from the language and, soon, most people are rarely even aware they have lost anything at all. Except for those few unfortunates who find themselves genetically incapable of simply forgetting. These individuals who tempt danger by hiding Disappeared things are the prey of the Memory Police. Anyone caught also Disappears - dragged from their homes while their neighbours look the other way.
I couldn't help but think of Anne Frank's Diary while reading The Memory Police. I saw clear parallels with 1940s stories of hidden Jews and with the present-day re-emergence of fascist ideologies not only in authoritarian declarations of what is and is not considered acceptable to this society, but, more importantly, in the way most of the people seemed incapable of raising themselves to any form of resistance. Everything they had known was gradually being taken from them, but the prevailing wisdom was to make do and manage without, not to draw unwelcome attention to oneself, not to make a fuss.
The Memory Police is a superb depiction of human behaviour and manipulation. I loved the authenticity of Ogawa's characters. I could understand and empathise with all their actions and frequently found myself questioning how I might also react under those circumstances. I was completely enthralled from start to finish. There is an element of a fairytale to the storytelling style with the unnamed people on an unnamed wintry island. Aspects of their culture are recognisably Japanese, but this could be anyone anywhere. It's a haunting fable of how we construct our identities. How much of ourselves is determined by our memories? How free are we really if everything available to us is determined by someone else?
This is the most Orwellian book I’ve read in a while. It is an Animal Farm for our era. I would love to see this read in every classroom so that people are thinking about what it means when we are asked to pretend that something doesn’t exist; to forget uncomfortable truths; to consign certain books to the fire. This is a book that should be read by everyone.
This is the most Orwellian book I’ve read in a while. It is an Animal Farm for our era. I would love to see this read in every classroom so that people are thinking about what it means when we are asked to pretend that something doesn’t exist; to forget uncomfortable truths; to consign certain books to the fire. This is a book that should be read by everyone.
I have more complicated feelings about this than I expected to, as taken as I was with “[b:The Cafeteria in the Evening and a Pool in the Rain|46138677|The Cafeteria in the Evening and a Pool in the Rain|Yōko Ogawa|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1650388340l/46138677.SX50.jpg|1888205],” a short story of Ogawa’s published about a decade after this novel was.
The prose often felt flat to me, and I wonder whether it's because -- at the risk of sharing too much and in an odd venue -- I've spent the pandemic feeling an increasing sense of derealization. I think this novel was doing something that I didn't appreciate until too close to the end, a feeling reinforced by reading “How ‘The Memory Police’ Makes You See,” a great review by Jia Tolentino. I’m also still learning to read deeply, and may still struggle with the stylistic choice to give a narrator a diegetic voice …
I have more complicated feelings about this than I expected to, as taken as I was with “[b:The Cafeteria in the Evening and a Pool in the Rain|46138677|The Cafeteria in the Evening and a Pool in the Rain|Yōko Ogawa|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1650388340l/46138677.SX50.jpg|1888205],” a short story of Ogawa’s published about a decade after this novel was.
The prose often felt flat to me, and I wonder whether it's because -- at the risk of sharing too much and in an odd venue -- I've spent the pandemic feeling an increasing sense of derealization. I think this novel was doing something that I didn't appreciate until too close to the end, a feeling reinforced by reading “How ‘The Memory Police’ Makes You See,” a great review by Jia Tolentino. I’m also still learning to read deeply, and may still struggle with the stylistic choice to give a narrator a diegetic voice that doesn’t resonate with me immediately.
I think it’s still a great testament to a book’s force that you know you’ll continue thinking about it and want to revisit it, even if you can’t speak glowingly of it right away.
A slow, eddying novel about living with change and forgetting the past. Not much happens, but i still found myself thinking a lot about this book and its quiet hopefulness.
I feel like this is a beautiful and evocative book, for someone whose life experiences are rather different from mine.
It's all about loss and love and memory, grief and acceptance and other deep themes, and it treats them in lovely skillful ways. But while I have of course experienced these things, being a person and all, the ways that the book deals with them is from a subtly and perhaps mysteriously different perspective than mine. Maybe the ideal reader is a woman, or from Japan, or just has a different relationship with the world than I do, in some subtler way.
Having said that, though, I don't begrudge the time that I spent reading it, and I certainly came away with some striking new images, if not any specific insights or resolution.
Even at its darkest, you can still find a glimmer of hope in the strangest of places when you've given up looking. Grasping onto things as if they won't change is so painful. Floating on the wave, allows you to survive albeit in a different way than expected.
Another example of a book's premise being far more interesting than the book itself. You live on an island where you wake up one day and something from your life has just vanished. The first incident in the book involves birds, so everyone woke up and suddenly the concept of "bird" holds no meaning. You don't remember what a bird was, you don't know what a bird is, all knowledge of "bird" is removed by the Memory Police. Holding onto past concepts like birds, flowers, calendars, is forbidden, and it's considered taboo to reminisce or talk about items that have been "disappeared". As the book progresses, the disappeared items take the form of increasingly important and valuable things, and while disoriented and discomfited, the people are expected and encouraged to take it in stride and move on.
Certain people are immune to this, where they retain all memories and knowledge …
Another example of a book's premise being far more interesting than the book itself. You live on an island where you wake up one day and something from your life has just vanished. The first incident in the book involves birds, so everyone woke up and suddenly the concept of "bird" holds no meaning. You don't remember what a bird was, you don't know what a bird is, all knowledge of "bird" is removed by the Memory Police. Holding onto past concepts like birds, flowers, calendars, is forbidden, and it's considered taboo to reminisce or talk about items that have been "disappeared". As the book progresses, the disappeared items take the form of increasingly important and valuable things, and while disoriented and discomfited, the people are expected and encouraged to take it in stride and move on.
Certain people are immune to this, where they retain all memories and knowledge of things that have been disappeared, and if discovered by the Memory Police, these people are taken away and never seen again. Our main character is not one of these people, but does hide away her editor as he is one of these people. Romance blooms as romance does in books like these, and the editors tries his best to make the main character remember things that had been lost and realize how awful things truly are.
It's a very dystopian novel, and one without any real satisfying answers or conclusion. We never find out who or what the Memory Police act on behalf of, or why these things are being removed. I gather the novel is about how complacency is a creeping, insidious beast (the things disappeared start out innocuous and easily missed and slowly ramp up in importance and meaning as the story progresses), and that people should never just accept things as they are, but honestly the book came off boring and incomplete. This would've had more meaning if we had more reason to care about the people and their fate.
Really strange book. Good characters, but in the end the story is so abstract and lacking any explanation that it was kind of a frustrating read. I appreciated the message (at least that I took away), though: the default/actionless path can be more dangerous than activism.