The Memory Police
Yoko Ogawa · 2019
On a nameless island, things disappear (perfume, birds, roses) and then so does the memory of them. Ogawa's surrealist masterpiece about authoritarianism and erasure finally reached English readers in 2019 and immediately felt like a classic. The island is everywhere.
The case against
Affectless by design, and the design costs: the unnamed narrator drifts, the rules of disappearance stay conveniently foggy, and once R moves into the hidden room the middle hundred pages are waiting, quietly described. The typist novel-within-the-novel restates the theme rather than deepening it. Beautiful sedation, with a dissolve where an ending might have gone.
Best of Last 10 Years · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
