jmckendry's review against another edition
2.0
Really interesting premise, but it just wasn't for me.
trudilibrarian's review against another edition
4.0
I'm so remiss in my reviews of late, but I really wanted to make sure I wrote something for this one to draw your attention to it: A) because it's a whole lot of wacky, weird and wild fun (something I've come to expect from this author) and B) said author was generous enough to send me a copy in the mail so the very least I can do is tell the reading world what I thought of it.
James Renner is the author of the mind-bending, genre-mashing [b:The Man from Primrose Lane|12476620|The Man from Primrose Lane|James Renner|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1431521815s/12476620.jpg|17460972] and you really must read that one if you are looking for something that is wholly unlike anything else. There was some buzz a few years back that Bradley Cooper had been tapped to star in a film adaptation, but no updates on that yet.
I didn't know what to expect in picking up The Great Forgetting, but you can bet I approached it with keen anticipation. Renner is a brave author who doesn't ever make safe choices. He marches out into the badlands of crazy and bewildering, sees what he finds there, and then puts it into his story. It doesn't always work, but considering the kind of unique crazy pants he's peddling, it works amazingly, unforgettably (heh) well most of the time.
This one starts as almost a quiet domestic drama: an unassuming high school teacher returns to his hometown where his sister is looking after their senile father. Jack has to deal with an ex-girlfriend who married his best childhood friend Tony. But Tony has gone missing and his wife wants Jack to help her get him declared deceased. In his efforts to do this, Jack meets a boy named Cole, the last person Tony had any significant contact with before his disappearance. Cole is a patient in a psychiatric ward suffering from complex and paranoid delusions. Or are they? The more Jack talks to him the further down the rabbit hole he goes. And takes us with him.
Side note of interest: James Renner is definitely an author to watch. And while he has a noteworthy talent spinning wild and crazy tales of speculative fiction, Renner is also a dedicated true crime writer. He is currently researching the unsolved disappearance of Umass nursing student, Maura Murray and will publish [b:True Crime Addict|26114508|True Crime Addict How I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Maura Murray|James Renner|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1443186126s/26114508.jpg|46061349] in May 2016 about his experiences. The Maura Murray case is a real life rabbit hole story and it is very easy to become lost in all the moving pieces and arm chair detective theories that exist for this cold case. Renner also maintains a blog of his ongoing investigations that makes for riveting reading if you are into that sort of thing.
Two young armchair detectives are also hosting a pretty decent podcast right now about the Maura Murray case in which Renner has been a guest. The hosts are currently at work on a documentary.
James Renner is the author of the mind-bending, genre-mashing [b:The Man from Primrose Lane|12476620|The Man from Primrose Lane|James Renner|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1431521815s/12476620.jpg|17460972] and you really must read that one if you are looking for something that is wholly unlike anything else. There was some buzz a few years back that Bradley Cooper had been tapped to star in a film adaptation, but no updates on that yet.
I didn't know what to expect in picking up The Great Forgetting, but you can bet I approached it with keen anticipation. Renner is a brave author who doesn't ever make safe choices. He marches out into the badlands of crazy and bewildering, sees what he finds there, and then puts it into his story. It doesn't always work, but considering the kind of unique crazy pants he's peddling, it works amazingly, unforgettably (heh) well most of the time.
This one starts as almost a quiet domestic drama: an unassuming high school teacher returns to his hometown where his sister is looking after their senile father. Jack has to deal with an ex-girlfriend who married his best childhood friend Tony. But Tony has gone missing and his wife wants Jack to help her get him declared deceased. In his efforts to do this, Jack meets a boy named Cole, the last person Tony had any significant contact with before his disappearance. Cole is a patient in a psychiatric ward suffering from complex and paranoid delusions. Or are they? The more Jack talks to him the further down the rabbit hole he goes. And takes us with him.
Side note of interest: James Renner is definitely an author to watch. And while he has a noteworthy talent spinning wild and crazy tales of speculative fiction, Renner is also a dedicated true crime writer. He is currently researching the unsolved disappearance of Umass nursing student, Maura Murray and will publish [b:True Crime Addict|26114508|True Crime Addict How I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Maura Murray|James Renner|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1443186126s/26114508.jpg|46061349] in May 2016 about his experiences. The Maura Murray case is a real life rabbit hole story and it is very easy to become lost in all the moving pieces and arm chair detective theories that exist for this cold case. Renner also maintains a blog of his ongoing investigations that makes for riveting reading if you are into that sort of thing.
Two young armchair detectives are also hosting a pretty decent podcast right now about the Maura Murray case in which Renner has been a guest. The hosts are currently at work on a documentary.
seattleserina's review against another edition
5.0
One of the best books I've read in awhile. I love it when sci-fi incorporates real world events/people; it makes everything feel a little more believable, no matter how unbelievable it is. Great ending too. I immediately went to the library to check out the authors other book.
mcipher's review against another edition
4.0
Read in one day because I was just so enthralled. Fascinating and strange and so plausibly crazy... I loved this book. Go read it. Renner's writing is awesome, he knows what he is doing and sucks you right in. It is a little reminiscent of reading as a child - something utterly comforting to how he phrases things, no matter how messed up it all gets.
sushideception's review against another edition
3.0
CAUTION: This review is filled with spoilers like you wouldn't believe. Definitely don't read this review unless you've read the book or unless you're positively sure you never will—come back later if you think you may read it at some point in the future, because The Great Forgetting definitely benefits from its surprises, wacky and flawed as they may be.
I don't think there's any better way to describe my experience with The Great Forgetting than to relate two separate encounters I had while reading it.
I was halfway into Part 2 when my friend saw me reading this book. "Any good?" she asked. I nodded fiercely. "I can't wait to finish it. It's just so wild!"
The next time she saw me reading it, a few days later, I was mere pages from the end. "Almost done, huh?" she asked. I sighed heavily and nodded. "I can't wait to finish it. It's just so... wild."
"Good wild?"
I shook my head. "Bad wild."
See, the very thing that drew me into the story in the first place—the craziness of it—was the same thing that became so grating by the end. With every new aspect the author introduced, my disbelief became harder and harder to suspend until it was so ludicrous I rolled my eyes several times per chapter.
But let's backtrack for a second. The Great Forgetting is what I would call conspiracy fiction—it imagines not an alternate world from our own but the same one we live in, with all the secrets and covert plots laid bare. When the only main conspiracy Renner tackled was the titular one (radio signals causing people's minds to be wiped, allowing them to partake in a communal delusion and a shared yet false history) I was hooked. It was just in the right place between "plausible" and "crackpot nonsense" that reading about the protagonist delving further into something he initially dismissed was simultaneously entertaining and really engaging. But then Renner just had to go and through every single goddamned conspiracy theory ever hatched into this book, and it was just. Too much. Don't believe me? Here's a list of conspiracies The Great Forgetting incorporates into its plot, just off the top of my head:
- Bigfoot
- Nazi scientists
- the Holocaust
- fluoridated water
- Amelia Earhart
- D. B. Cooper
- the lost continent of Mu
- Alcatraz escapees
- fabricated history
- faked deaths
- genetically engineered humanoids
- chemtrails
- the 9/11 attacks
- Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
- Area 51
- Morgellons Syndrome
- secret tunnels through mountain ranges
- underground cities
- and practically everything but lizard people. And to be honest, I was kind of surprised that after all this nonsense, Mr Renner didn't just throw a repitilian overlord into the mix for shits and giggles.
But the ludicrous amount of conspiracies—even a few of which are too many to keep from scoffing at outright—wasn't the only bloated part of this novel. There were also way too many characters, several of which could easily be eliminated (such as Becky, Zaharie, Nils, and who the fuck even was Constance?). This issue isn't helped by the fact that every single character gets at least one mini-chapter where the omniscient narrator is in their head, so we see things from their point of view. It keeps the story from ever feeling focused on one plot, one issue, until the very end, and by then it's far too late. Plus, most of the conflicts that these alternate POV passages bring up are never touched on again, let alone resolved, rendering this tactic doubly ineffective.
Further, the characters themselves aren't interesting enough to warrant such a large number of them. The protagonist, Jack Felter, is pretty boring, being constantly moral and responsible and perfect and just generally not having a personality. His love interest Sam has a bit more going on, but her interesting tragic backstory was mentioned in the beginning and rarely seemed to affect her afterwards. And don't even get me started about Tony—Tony was just a fucking mystery to me. I guess I'm just supposed to accept his last-act transformation into a villain, and the fact that he was practically the human equivalent of a stale cracker despite everyone loving him and willing to walk the world for him.
Also... I refuse to believe that I'm reading into this just because I'm gay—there was definitely something happening between Tony and Jack, right? What the hell was that relationship? Jack remembers feeling closer to Tony than he'd ever felt with anyone else (even Sam, apparently). As kids they slept so close together in their sleeping bags that Jack fell asleep with Tony's breath on his face. They say they love each other pretty often—and before you come at me with that "they're just good friends" and "men can be vulnerable and loving with their friends, too", hang on! Jack doesn't just mention loving Tony, he mentions falling in love with him, and he says that it happened "the same way it happened with women." Okay, so I guess we just have to leave it at that, because Renner just sort of drops it without any real elaboration or exploration of this relationship. I guess they're just two straight guys who fell in love... straightly? And then fell in love with the same woman? (And speaking of, what the hell was up with that situation? The author acts like "falling into bed" with your best friend and his girlfriend is a totally natural thing that happens, but, uh, you know, it's definitely not. I don't casually visit people and wind up—oops!—sleeping with them and their significant other. Sam, Tony, and Jack's whole threesome/side-relationship thing was just baffling and it came out of absolutely nowhere.)
I don't mean to disparage all of the characters, though. Cole and the Captain were pretty great. Jean was great, too. What united these side characters, interestingly enough, is that they have compelling backstories AND flaws. They're layered and they're human and they're far from perfect. Their chapters were the only thing that redeemed the multiple-POV format.
Onto the writing. The prose in this book is nothing to write home about, but it's tremendously readable from start to finish so credit to Mr Renner for keeping things flowing smoothly there. Renner has a very specific talent that I noted a few times: he's very good at describing sound. I remember one noise being described as a thousand rubber balls rolling down staircases, for example. So that was pretty cool. But tonally, this book really confused me. I could never put my finger on how seriously it wanted to be taken. In some places, it seemed like Renner was being almost tongue-in-cheek with his scores of conspiracy references, but in others it seemed like he genuinely wanted to make a larger point about humanity. There were some serious and thought-provoking passages about memory, immediately followed by these madcap chases by Nazi-created yeti-men with teleportation belts that totally threw the whole thing off. It was like tonal whiplash.
There was also a huge missed opportunity for some awesome meta-mindfuckery with the mention that some of the memories we'd previously read were altered—but nothing ever came of it. You never know why some memories were changed, or what they were originally. Which really bummed me out because I was ready for my head to be screwed with in a way that wasn't just another rehashing of that "alternate history where the Nazis took over" shtick.
I feel like I'm tearing this book to shreds and I really don't mean to. The first third is so interesting and engaging, and the parts with Cole showing Jack the "gradient," where you're not sure if he's trying to pull Jack into his delusions or if he's really perfectly sane, are fantastic. There was a delicious tension and conflict between what Jack believed and what he was being told, and later between what he believed and what he saw. I loved Cole's manipulation, earnest and clever as it was, and the moment when Jack had to decide whether to believe that he was crazy, or that there truly was a conspiracy so far-reaching it effected everyone else in the world. But once Jack threw himself into the conspiracy of the Great Forgetting, everything became so much more contrived.
One last thing before I go. The denouement of this story was just so problematic. I already had lowered my expectations after the "paradise island where everything and everyone is happy and perfect" segment, but good god did the ending just wreck it all. Not only did it involve all but two of the main cast of characters crashing suddenly to their deaths, but there was so much "Aha, I knew you would do that, which is why I did THIS! Bwahahaha!" it was just embarrassing. I feel like the rushed ending was the final nail in the coffin for me here, and the only reason this book was spared from getting two stars is because I really did love it in the beginning. Alas, sometimes a story just derails after a promising start. It's a special kind of disappointing.
I don't think there's any better way to describe my experience with The Great Forgetting than to relate two separate encounters I had while reading it.
I was halfway into Part 2 when my friend saw me reading this book. "Any good?" she asked. I nodded fiercely. "I can't wait to finish it. It's just so wild!"
The next time she saw me reading it, a few days later, I was mere pages from the end. "Almost done, huh?" she asked. I sighed heavily and nodded. "I can't wait to finish it. It's just so... wild."
"Good wild?"
I shook my head. "Bad wild."
See, the very thing that drew me into the story in the first place—the craziness of it—was the same thing that became so grating by the end. With every new aspect the author introduced, my disbelief became harder and harder to suspend until it was so ludicrous I rolled my eyes several times per chapter.
But let's backtrack for a second. The Great Forgetting is what I would call conspiracy fiction—it imagines not an alternate world from our own but the same one we live in, with all the secrets and covert plots laid bare. When the only main conspiracy Renner tackled was the titular one (radio signals causing people's minds to be wiped, allowing them to partake in a communal delusion and a shared yet false history) I was hooked. It was just in the right place between "plausible" and "crackpot nonsense" that reading about the protagonist delving further into something he initially dismissed was simultaneously entertaining and really engaging. But then Renner just had to go and through every single goddamned conspiracy theory ever hatched into this book, and it was just. Too much. Don't believe me? Here's a list of conspiracies The Great Forgetting incorporates into its plot, just off the top of my head:
- Bigfoot
- Nazi scientists
- the Holocaust
- fluoridated water
- Amelia Earhart
- D. B. Cooper
- the lost continent of Mu
- Alcatraz escapees
- fabricated history
- faked deaths
- genetically engineered humanoids
- chemtrails
- the 9/11 attacks
- Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
- Area 51
- Morgellons Syndrome
- secret tunnels through mountain ranges
- underground cities
- and practically everything but lizard people. And to be honest, I was kind of surprised that after all this nonsense, Mr Renner didn't just throw a repitilian overlord into the mix for shits and giggles.
But the ludicrous amount of conspiracies—even a few of which are too many to keep from scoffing at outright—wasn't the only bloated part of this novel. There were also way too many characters, several of which could easily be eliminated (such as Becky, Zaharie, Nils, and who the fuck even was Constance?). This issue isn't helped by the fact that every single character gets at least one mini-chapter where the omniscient narrator is in their head, so we see things from their point of view. It keeps the story from ever feeling focused on one plot, one issue, until the very end, and by then it's far too late. Plus, most of the conflicts that these alternate POV passages bring up are never touched on again, let alone resolved, rendering this tactic doubly ineffective.
Further, the characters themselves aren't interesting enough to warrant such a large number of them. The protagonist, Jack Felter, is pretty boring, being constantly moral and responsible and perfect and just generally not having a personality. His love interest Sam has a bit more going on, but her interesting tragic backstory was mentioned in the beginning and rarely seemed to affect her afterwards. And don't even get me started about Tony—Tony was just a fucking mystery to me. I guess I'm just supposed to accept his last-act transformation into a villain, and the fact that he was practically the human equivalent of a stale cracker despite everyone loving him and willing to walk the world for him.
Also... I refuse to believe that I'm reading into this just because I'm gay—there was definitely something happening between Tony and Jack, right? What the hell was that relationship? Jack remembers feeling closer to Tony than he'd ever felt with anyone else (even Sam, apparently). As kids they slept so close together in their sleeping bags that Jack fell asleep with Tony's breath on his face. They say they love each other pretty often—and before you come at me with that "they're just good friends" and "men can be vulnerable and loving with their friends, too", hang on! Jack doesn't just mention loving Tony, he mentions falling in love with him, and he says that it happened "the same way it happened with women." Okay, so I guess we just have to leave it at that, because Renner just sort of drops it without any real elaboration or exploration of this relationship. I guess they're just two straight guys who fell in love... straightly? And then fell in love with the same woman? (And speaking of, what the hell was up with that situation? The author acts like "falling into bed" with your best friend and his girlfriend is a totally natural thing that happens, but, uh, you know, it's definitely not. I don't casually visit people and wind up—oops!—sleeping with them and their significant other. Sam, Tony, and Jack's whole threesome/side-relationship thing was just baffling and it came out of absolutely nowhere.)
I don't mean to disparage all of the characters, though. Cole and the Captain were pretty great. Jean was great, too. What united these side characters, interestingly enough, is that they have compelling backstories AND flaws. They're layered and they're human and they're far from perfect. Their chapters were the only thing that redeemed the multiple-POV format.
Onto the writing. The prose in this book is nothing to write home about, but it's tremendously readable from start to finish so credit to Mr Renner for keeping things flowing smoothly there. Renner has a very specific talent that I noted a few times: he's very good at describing sound. I remember one noise being described as a thousand rubber balls rolling down staircases, for example. So that was pretty cool. But tonally, this book really confused me. I could never put my finger on how seriously it wanted to be taken. In some places, it seemed like Renner was being almost tongue-in-cheek with his scores of conspiracy references, but in others it seemed like he genuinely wanted to make a larger point about humanity. There were some serious and thought-provoking passages about memory, immediately followed by these madcap chases by Nazi-created yeti-men with teleportation belts that totally threw the whole thing off. It was like tonal whiplash.
There was also a huge missed opportunity for some awesome meta-mindfuckery with the mention that some of the memories we'd previously read were altered—but nothing ever came of it. You never know why some memories were changed, or what they were originally. Which really bummed me out because I was ready for my head to be screwed with in a way that wasn't just another rehashing of that "alternate history where the Nazis took over" shtick.
I feel like I'm tearing this book to shreds and I really don't mean to. The first third is so interesting and engaging, and the parts with Cole showing Jack the "gradient," where you're not sure if he's trying to pull Jack into his delusions or if he's really perfectly sane, are fantastic. There was a delicious tension and conflict between what Jack believed and what he was being told, and later between what he believed and what he saw. I loved Cole's manipulation, earnest and clever as it was, and the moment when Jack had to decide whether to believe that he was crazy, or that there truly was a conspiracy so far-reaching it effected everyone else in the world. But once Jack threw himself into the conspiracy of the Great Forgetting, everything became so much more contrived.
One last thing before I go. The denouement of this story was just so problematic. I already had lowered my expectations after the "paradise island where everything and everyone is happy and perfect" segment, but good god did the ending just wreck it all. Not only did it involve all but two of the main cast of characters crashing suddenly to their deaths, but there was so much "Aha, I knew you would do that, which is why I did THIS! Bwahahaha!" it was just embarrassing. I feel like the rushed ending was the final nail in the coffin for me here, and the only reason this book was spared from getting two stars is because I really did love it in the beginning. Alas, sometimes a story just derails after a promising start. It's a special kind of disappointing.
aira_reads's review against another edition
5.0
What a whirlwind of a book!
I love the details from the fluoridation of water to the radio waves altering your mindset to the historical mentions of the lost continent of Mu.
I love the inclusion of real world events and twisting the fact. Eg the Deepwater Horizon incident and an alluding to the Koch brothers: "I found the two greediest men in the world, two brothers who want to control the world with their oil money. Buying influence. Stealing elections. They sank a hundred million dollars into the Tea Party last year, not because they're patriots but because the Tea Party will do away with all regulation, the only thing keeping greed in check."
I love how I didn't know where the author was going. It felt fresh but also familiar because he added a lot of historic details + the characters are so broken that they feel real-ish.
Favourite quotes
Miracles inspired action. Miracles changed he works.
----
"How would I deserve that happiness if I knew that everyone back home was living in a world run by capitalists who can rewrite our memories with a simple phone call? That's not a freedom."
"You think people want freedom? Everyone is scared. They don't want freedom. They want to forget."
----
"It's greed we should have forgotten. My history. That's what the founders didn't understand. We forgot about all those bad things, but we left greed in the box and that's why it didn't work. Every war, every act of terrorism we've seen since we hit that reset button, it was all based in greed."
---
Prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy
---
"Everything you've ever seen, everything you've ever been told, is only the echo of an older story."
---
That's what it's about. Making the world just a little better for the next generation. Make their story a little better than your own. Eventually we'll get it right.
----
Considered the basic irony of war: what is it that each side fights for? Peace. They right to end fighting. Like drinking to get sober
I love the details from the fluoridation of water to the radio waves altering your mindset to the historical mentions of the lost continent of Mu.
I love the inclusion of real world events and twisting the fact. Eg the Deepwater Horizon incident and an alluding to the Koch brothers: "I found the two greediest men in the world, two brothers who want to control the world with their oil money. Buying influence. Stealing elections. They sank a hundred million dollars into the Tea Party last year, not because they're patriots but because the Tea Party will do away with all regulation, the only thing keeping greed in check."
I love how I didn't know where the author was going. It felt fresh but also familiar because he added a lot of historic details + the characters are so broken that they feel real-ish.
Favourite quotes
Miracles inspired action. Miracles changed he works.
----
"How would I deserve that happiness if I knew that everyone back home was living in a world run by capitalists who can rewrite our memories with a simple phone call? That's not a freedom."
"You think people want freedom? Everyone is scared. They don't want freedom. They want to forget."
----
"It's greed we should have forgotten. My history. That's what the founders didn't understand. We forgot about all those bad things, but we left greed in the box and that's why it didn't work. Every war, every act of terrorism we've seen since we hit that reset button, it was all based in greed."
---
Prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy
---
"Everything you've ever seen, everything you've ever been told, is only the echo of an older story."
---
That's what it's about. Making the world just a little better for the next generation. Make their story a little better than your own. Eventually we'll get it right.
----
Considered the basic irony of war: what is it that each side fights for? Peace. They right to end fighting. Like drinking to get sober
traceyvj's review against another edition
4.0
Loved this! The pace of this book starts off quite slowly, building some really well drawn, interesting characters. Even the "bad guys" are so interesting they're likable. Then once we've figured out who everyone is and how they're related to each other, we're off! What a ride! This tale solves some of the great mysteries, past and present. I found myself smiling lots at the subtle little references to pop culture and history, and I kind of wish the story in this book was the real reason behind all the problems of the world. I have to give James Renner respect for including some of the more current events, as I think another author may have shied away from them. As they would say in my part of the world: "Mate, you've got balls!"
4 1/2 stars from me - half a star off because it should've been longer.
4 1/2 stars from me - half a star off because it should've been longer.
anlekaha's review against another edition
4.0
This book has such a fun premise but it's the details that make it fantastic. I love all the nods to history that make the story fun. It's not airtight but such a story could never really be (which is good so you don't question your reality) but it is entertaining and has a great message.
thepoptimist's review against another edition
4.0
It’s the Dan Brown of conspiracy novels. Everything from TacMars, fluoride, chemtrails, bigfoot, and somewhat worryingly, 9/11. But what is most interesting is the idea of Phantom Time, the idea that over the course of history, people in positions of power have modified the calendar to suit their own agendas. Scholars believe that Pope Sylvester II skipped a hundred years just so he could be the Pope of 1000 A.D. What if that happens all the time and we’re just not aware of it? What if WW2 extended beyond the borders of Europe and into the United States? And what if we just wanted to forget?
Boil your water and try to befriend someone with a metal plate in their head.
Boil your water and try to befriend someone with a metal plate in their head.