Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa

50 reviews

sadhbhprice's review

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dark reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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fkshg8465's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Admittedly, it’s a little too neatly written, but I loved every word of this book. The parallel stories, the ending, the reflection of our actual lives today, and the ever present Japanese them of ephemera. I’ll be thinking about this one a long time, which is a little ironic given its subject matter 😂 Would love to see this made into a movie. Since it seems a lot of these dystopian settings are on isolated islands, Hollywood cops probably reuse a set from a previous dystopian movie set on an island 🤣
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ginaelise's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This is a book that will sit with you. So many ways to reflect on what you just read. I loved the regularness of such dystopia. Deals with trauma and loss and how we keep/do not keep those memories. 
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mr_ryancowboy's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

It's a beautiful book, very atmospheric. It is however, super bleak dystopia.
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hyppolitas's review against another edition

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reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.0

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moxiereads's review against another edition

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dark sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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arayo's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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pyroclast17's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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piratesarah's review against another edition

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dark reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? N/A
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This haunting story of a dystopian island is a deep exploration of the concept of revisionist history. I will be thinking about it for a long time.
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apthompson's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

“My memories don’t feel as though they’ve been pulled up by the root. Even if they fade, something remains. Like tiny seeds that might germinate again if the rain falls. And even if a memory disappears completely, the heart retains something. A slight tremor or pain, some bit of joy, a tear.”

“His soul is too dense. If he comes out, he’ll dissolve into pieces, like a deep-sea fish pulled to the surface too quickly. I suppose my job is to go on holding him here at the bottom of the sea.”

“People—and I’m no exception—seem capable of forgetting almost anything, much as if our island were unable to float in anything but an expanse of totally empty sea.”

This novel, in its Orwellian decent, presents a surveillance-state dystopian island, where collective loss is enforced, and those who remember are systematically destroyed by The Memory Police. This a highly personal and profound type of apocalypse. The plot is reminiscent of The Diary of Anne Frank, and other real life histories of safe houses in the face or persecution; it concerns a woman’s efforts to hide one of the people who remembers, someone she cares for, in a purpose-built annex under her floorboards.

While it is, in many ways, set up like a typical dystopian novel that deftly illustrates the insidious, dehumanizing claw of totalitarianism, the true power of this novel is how it moves past the political implications of a dystopia to the very real horrors of forgetting and the destruction to society and the self this causes. There’s a quiet tension that stalks the pages of the novel. The fear, claustrophobia and struggle feel real. 

If you want to read a sci-fi book that explores the effects on the individual, then definitely pick this up.

rating: ★★★★

🗺️ Reading Around the World 2024: Japan 🇯🇵
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