A review by mcomer
The Memory Police, by Yōko Ogawa

5.0

This novel is a journey into a quietly horrifying dystopia. The book very much has its own pace and atmosphere - there is a plot, but all action, even very dramatic parts, and especially the emotions, are muffled and subdued. It's as if it's a product of the novel's setting, a place where people lose their memories of certain things on a government-appointed schedule - what would novels, let alone life, be like without a store of memories to draw on and color what happens next? As objects are 'disappeared' and lose their place in memory, the people are obliged to destroy those objects, meaning that there is no material vestige where anyone could attach any fragment of memory. (As a heritage studies researcher, this called to mind the never-ending debate over the meanings we attach to heritage objects/sites as opposed to any 'inherent' meaning an object might hold.) But it's not that simple: some people, apparently due to some genetic difference, cannot simply forget when ordered to forget. The Memory Police are committed to tracking down and disappearing these people who can remember, which gives the novel's plot its dramatic tension and also its strong parallels to real-life totalitarian regimes. I found the novel's depiction of populations alternately complying with the Memory Police's orders, acting as bystanders to human rights abuses, resisting, and suffering the consequences of resisting to be highly realistic and accurate - which is partially why the book is so grim. But this is not as simple as a story of resisters either defeating an authoritarian government or dying bravely in the attempt. Instead, the novel and its ending call into question the meaning and function of memory and, by extension, life itself. I can recommend for an existentially thought-provoking, if gloomy, meditation.