Saturday, January 11, 2020

The Memory Police by Yogo Odawa - review


This is a Japanese novel in translation by Yogo Odawa and which I heard about in one of the blogs that I read. It takes place on a small island, where we learn that random things are disappearing.  These things are everything from perfume and roses to boats and novels and even people. The goal is that the remaining people will slowly forget the items and people that are gone. And yet, it's not like 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale.  It's very, slow. 

The protagonist is a young woman who is a novelist and she floats along, not caring if things are happening and not making things happen. She is hardly an agent of ANYTHING, whether it is for change or advocating for the state. It's like she doesn't care about anything. Nothing happens - she doesn't learn anything and the plot doesn't move. I kept waiting for something but nothing happened and I was left unsatisfied and disappointed. 

I would pass on this one. 

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