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The Memory Police
On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses—until things become much more serious. Most of the island's inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten.
When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.
A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.
When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.
A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.
274 pages, Hardcover
First published January 26, 1994
About the author
Yōko Ogawa
134 books4,099 followersYōko Ogawa (小川 洋子) was born in Okayama, Okayama Prefecture, graduated from Waseda University, and lives in Ashiya. Since 1988, she has published more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction. Her novel The Professor and his Beloved Equation has been made into a movie. In 2006 she co-authored „An Introduction to the World's Most Elegant Mathematics“ with Masahiko Fujiwara, a mathematician, as a dialogue on the extraordinary beauty of numbers.
A film in French, "L'Annulaire“ (The Ringfinger), directed by Diane Bertrand, starring Olga Kurylenko and Marc Barbé, was released in France in June 2005 and subsequently made the rounds of the international film festivals; the film, some of which is filmed in the Hamburg docks, is based in part on Ogawa's "Kusuriyubi no hyōhon“ (薬指の標本), translated into French as "L'Annulaire“ (by Rose-Marie Makino-Fayolle who has translated numerous works by Ogawa, as well as works by Akira Yoshimura and by Ranpo Edogawa, into French).
Kenzaburō Ōe has said, 'Yōko Ogawa is able to give expression to the most subtle workings of human psychology in prose that is gentle yet penetrating.' The subtlety in part lies in the fact that Ogawa's characters often seem not to know why they are doing what they are doing. She works by accumulation of detail, a technique that is perhaps more successful in her shorter works; the slow pace of development in the longer works requires something of a deus ex machina to end them. The reader is presented with an acute description of what the protagonists, mostly but not always female, observe and feel and their somewhat alienated self-observations, some of which is a reflection of Japanese society and especially women's roles within in it. The tone of her works varies, across the works and sometimes within the longer works, from the surreal, through the grotesque and the--sometimes grotesquely--humorous, to the psychologically ambiguous and even disturbing.
A film in French, "L'Annulaire“ (The Ringfinger), directed by Diane Bertrand, starring Olga Kurylenko and Marc Barbé, was released in France in June 2005 and subsequently made the rounds of the international film festivals; the film, some of which is filmed in the Hamburg docks, is based in part on Ogawa's "Kusuriyubi no hyōhon“ (薬指の標本), translated into French as "L'Annulaire“ (by Rose-Marie Makino-Fayolle who has translated numerous works by Ogawa, as well as works by Akira Yoshimura and by Ranpo Edogawa, into French).
Kenzaburō Ōe has said, 'Yōko Ogawa is able to give expression to the most subtle workings of human psychology in prose that is gentle yet penetrating.' The subtlety in part lies in the fact that Ogawa's characters often seem not to know why they are doing what they are doing. She works by accumulation of detail, a technique that is perhaps more successful in her shorter works; the slow pace of development in the longer works requires something of a deus ex machina to end them. The reader is presented with an acute description of what the protagonists, mostly but not always female, observe and feel and their somewhat alienated self-observations, some of which is a reflection of Japanese society and especially women's roles within in it. The tone of her works varies, across the works and sometimes within the longer works, from the surreal, through the grotesque and the--sometimes grotesquely--humorous, to the psychologically ambiguous and even disturbing.
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September 29, 2019
The horrors of forgetting
At first glance, The Memory Police, originally published in Japan in 1994 and now available in an excellent English translation, looks like a descendant of George Orwell's. Set on an unnamed island, objects are routinely "disappeared", both physically and also in the minds of the people. One day birds disappear. The next day it could be a type of candy. Anyone who dares to keep disappeared items is in danger. Those who actually remember them are in bigger danger. The Memory Police, clad in luxurious uniforms, keep everyone living in fear. People who remember are taken away, never to return again.
When a young writer learns her editor is one of the people who remembers, she is determined to protect him by hiding him in a secret room in her house.
So, yeah, it's set up like a typical dystopian novel that deftly illustrates the insidious, dehumanizing claw of totalitarianism. And Yōko Ogawa does this very well. There's a quiet tension that stalks the pages of the novel. The fear, claustrophobia and struggle feel real. But she moves further (and I love that she did this), past the political, and into the larger, universal sphere of death.
Yes, death. Because the people don't just lose objects when things are disappeared. With each lost item, people also lose the associated memories. Thus, their hearts, souls, and selves suffer losses that cannot be recovered.
The young woman worries about the day when everything on the island is disappeared. When the people are disappeared. Her editor, a man who still can remember, keeps reassuring her. Just because things have been disappeared doesn't make them any less real. Even if everything disappeared, the stories would be there. He promises to protect the memories.
But with patient, hypnotic progression, the losses continue. It becomes less about the woman losing the world around her and more about the man losing the woman before his eyes.
I loved this, my first foray into Ogawa's large oeuvre. Written in deceptively flat, simple prose, it offers no easy answers. We don't know the wheres, whens, hows, whys. This has twinges of The Vegetarian and even The Metamorphosis, with weird, alienating transformations and much left to the reader to discern. It also feels particularly relevant in today's world (and here's where it gets political again) where our collective memories seem no better than that of a goldfish's swimming in the ether, where yesterday's news is swallowed up in today's hypocrisy.
Devastating and terrifying, this forced march towards complete loss. In a world where writers lose their voice, where is the hope? I like to believe it's tiny, and it's secret, and maybe it's not enough, but it's there, in a hidden room where the seeds of resistance and memory reside.
At first glance, The Memory Police, originally published in Japan in 1994 and now available in an excellent English translation, looks like a descendant of George Orwell's. Set on an unnamed island, objects are routinely "disappeared", both physically and also in the minds of the people. One day birds disappear. The next day it could be a type of candy. Anyone who dares to keep disappeared items is in danger. Those who actually remember them are in bigger danger. The Memory Police, clad in luxurious uniforms, keep everyone living in fear. People who remember are taken away, never to return again.
When a young writer learns her editor is one of the people who remembers, she is determined to protect him by hiding him in a secret room in her house.
So, yeah, it's set up like a typical dystopian novel that deftly illustrates the insidious, dehumanizing claw of totalitarianism. And Yōko Ogawa does this very well. There's a quiet tension that stalks the pages of the novel. The fear, claustrophobia and struggle feel real. But she moves further (and I love that she did this), past the political, and into the larger, universal sphere of death.
Yes, death. Because the people don't just lose objects when things are disappeared. With each lost item, people also lose the associated memories. Thus, their hearts, souls, and selves suffer losses that cannot be recovered.
The young woman worries about the day when everything on the island is disappeared. When the people are disappeared. Her editor, a man who still can remember, keeps reassuring her. Just because things have been disappeared doesn't make them any less real. Even if everything disappeared, the stories would be there. He promises to protect the memories.
But with patient, hypnotic progression, the losses continue. It becomes less about the woman losing the world around her and more about the man losing the woman before his eyes.
I loved this, my first foray into Ogawa's large oeuvre. Written in deceptively flat, simple prose, it offers no easy answers. We don't know the wheres, whens, hows, whys. This has twinges of The Vegetarian and even The Metamorphosis, with weird, alienating transformations and much left to the reader to discern. It also feels particularly relevant in today's world (and here's where it gets political again) where our collective memories seem no better than that of a goldfish's swimming in the ether, where yesterday's news is swallowed up in today's hypocrisy.
Devastating and terrifying, this forced march towards complete loss. In a world where writers lose their voice, where is the hope? I like to believe it's tiny, and it's secret, and maybe it's not enough, but it's there, in a hidden room where the seeds of resistance and memory reside.
April 26, 2020
The Memory Police
is a hypnotic, gentle novel, that begins as a surveillance-state dystopia and ends as something more existential: a surreal and haunting meditation on our sense of self.
First published in Japan 25 years ago, and newly available in English translation, this novel has a timeless feel. The inhabitants of an unnamed island, living under an oppressive regime, experience a form of collective, gradual, amnesia. Upon waking, a seemingly random item—roses, birds, boats—will begin to fade from their minds. They must ensure the item's complete erasure by purging all evidence of its existence from the world. The Memory Police are there to crush any feeble resistance, but most people drift along with passive complaisance. What's the point in clinging to something you can't remember?
A small number of people are immune to the phenomenon. They, who alone are cursed with complete memories of all that has been lost, pose a threat to the regime and must conceal their outsider status at all costs.
The plot, such as it is, concerns a woman's efforts to hide one of these individuals in a purpose-built annex under her floorboards, in a manner reminiscent of The Diary of Anne Frank. Although it's never referred to as such, the room is an oubliette: a secret chamber that can only be accessed via a trapdoor in its ceiling (the name comes from the French oublier, 'to forget'). Meanwhile the 'forgettings' accelerate, becoming more and more extreme.
This is a quiet, serene, personal sort of apocalypse, where attempts at resistance are small, and which culminates in the very destruction of the self. I also recently read Revenge by the same author, and a quote from that book applies perfectly to this one:
With its powerful, resonant allegory and that icy current this is a memorable read. 4 stars.
First published in Japan 25 years ago, and newly available in English translation, this novel has a timeless feel. The inhabitants of an unnamed island, living under an oppressive regime, experience a form of collective, gradual, amnesia. Upon waking, a seemingly random item—roses, birds, boats—will begin to fade from their minds. They must ensure the item's complete erasure by purging all evidence of its existence from the world. The Memory Police are there to crush any feeble resistance, but most people drift along with passive complaisance. What's the point in clinging to something you can't remember?
A small number of people are immune to the phenomenon. They, who alone are cursed with complete memories of all that has been lost, pose a threat to the regime and must conceal their outsider status at all costs.
The plot, such as it is, concerns a woman's efforts to hide one of these individuals in a purpose-built annex under her floorboards, in a manner reminiscent of The Diary of Anne Frank. Although it's never referred to as such, the room is an oubliette: a secret chamber that can only be accessed via a trapdoor in its ceiling (the name comes from the French oublier, 'to forget'). Meanwhile the 'forgettings' accelerate, becoming more and more extreme.
This is a quiet, serene, personal sort of apocalypse, where attempts at resistance are small, and which culminates in the very destruction of the self. I also recently read Revenge by the same author, and a quote from that book applies perfectly to this one:
"The prose was unremarkable, as were the plot and characters, but there was an icy current running under her words, and I found myself wanting to plunge into it again and again."
With its powerful, resonant allegory and that icy current this is a memorable read. 4 stars.
April 12, 2024
another huge win for the best subgenre there is: translated literary fiction written by women.
it's going to do it for me every. single. time.
this book is a rare combination: riveting and thought-provoking. it's as plot-driven as it is thoughtful and significant, a win/win situation us lit fic stans almost never discover.
i do think this came with some costs — i didn't click as much with the characters, who by now (as i review this) i nearly forget except in broad strokes; the plot could feel like it dragged at points because at others it was so exciting — but overall, wow.
bottom line: good stuff!
it's going to do it for me every. single. time.
this book is a rare combination: riveting and thought-provoking. it's as plot-driven as it is thoughtful and significant, a win/win situation us lit fic stans almost never discover.
i do think this came with some costs — i didn't click as much with the characters, who by now (as i review this) i nearly forget except in broad strokes; the plot could feel like it dragged at points because at others it was so exciting — but overall, wow.
bottom line: good stuff!
June 13, 2022
Rating this solely based on how engaged I was while reading. What’s strange is that if I had listened to this on audiobook, or read it while relaxing in bed (as opposed to while commuting), I probably would have rated this 3 stars. It has an intriguing premise but no answers or a story that moves forward. It just goes off of eerie vagueness and abstract themes. I’m usually not into books like that, but I somehow was engaged anyway during my commute and flew through it quickly. I kept on wanting to see what things would disappear and how extreme this could get.
May 19, 2021
what a strange little book. and im still processing if i liked it or not.
there really isnt a plot. i got to the 60% mark and had no idea where this book was going, if anywhere at all. its basically a reflection of daily life on an island where things disappear. thats it. theres the memory police (who enforce people forgetting the things that disappear), which i guess could serve as an antagonist, but people mostly accept the situation, so their presence is a little underwhelming. i do think the concept is interesting, i just wish more had happened. its a very simple story.
so if you want to read a sci-fi book that explores what living in an alternate world might look like and its effects on the individual, then definitely pick this up.
↠ 3 stars
there really isnt a plot. i got to the 60% mark and had no idea where this book was going, if anywhere at all. its basically a reflection of daily life on an island where things disappear. thats it. theres the memory police (who enforce people forgetting the things that disappear), which i guess could serve as an antagonist, but people mostly accept the situation, so their presence is a little underwhelming. i do think the concept is interesting, i just wish more had happened. its a very simple story.
so if you want to read a sci-fi book that explores what living in an alternate world might look like and its effects on the individual, then definitely pick this up.
↠ 3 stars
January 31, 2022
[Edited 1/30/202]
We’re in a small town on a Japanese island. It’s dominated by the brutal “memory police” who make things disappear. Well, they make people make them disappear by declaring that ribbons or emeralds or stamps have to disappear and the citizens reluctantly but dutifully gather and hold bonfires to burn the now-forbidden item of the month.
Some people keep forbidden items and if the MP’s hear of that they will kick your door in and confiscate the items and haul you off who knows where. It’s likely you won’t be heard from again.
And not only do they forbid hoarding of items, they want the memory of those items to be destroyed. Most people forget what ribbon was, or what it was used for, and they forget the smell of now-banned perfume. But some people remember. The MPs want those people. The MPs know who they are and a few good souls try to hide them from the police in basements and in secret rooms at great peril to themselves
Our heroine is a young novelist. Her mother, a sculptor, was a hoarder of banned items. Her mother is no longer with us. The young woman only has two friends: her publisher and an old family friend who ran the ferry boat to the mainland before the ferry was “disappeared.” She doesn’t have the power of memory but she’s hiding someone in her house who does.
Increasingly important things begin to be banned: birds, fruit… and guess what else? It’s a novel about the trauma of loss.
We get to read excerpts from our heroine's latest novel about a woman who permanently loses her voice, so we have a story within a story that’s a metaphor for the ongoing horrors. She develops a love interest in her real life along with the woman in her story, so that helps keep the plot moving along.
A good story, and I think the book has the potential over time to become a classic of dystopian totalitarian literature along with others such as Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 and 1984.
A classic quote used in the book: “Men who start by burning books end up burning other men.”
I recently read and enjoyed another book by this Japanese author (b. 1962): The Housekeeper and the Professor. It too was about memory loss: an elderly professor who could retain recent memory only for an hour and a half.
Top photo on Honshu Island from thetimes.co.uk
Illustration from mexikaresistance.files.wordpress.com
The author from smh.com.au
We’re in a small town on a Japanese island. It’s dominated by the brutal “memory police” who make things disappear. Well, they make people make them disappear by declaring that ribbons or emeralds or stamps have to disappear and the citizens reluctantly but dutifully gather and hold bonfires to burn the now-forbidden item of the month.
Some people keep forbidden items and if the MP’s hear of that they will kick your door in and confiscate the items and haul you off who knows where. It’s likely you won’t be heard from again.
And not only do they forbid hoarding of items, they want the memory of those items to be destroyed. Most people forget what ribbon was, or what it was used for, and they forget the smell of now-banned perfume. But some people remember. The MPs want those people. The MPs know who they are and a few good souls try to hide them from the police in basements and in secret rooms at great peril to themselves
Our heroine is a young novelist. Her mother, a sculptor, was a hoarder of banned items. Her mother is no longer with us. The young woman only has two friends: her publisher and an old family friend who ran the ferry boat to the mainland before the ferry was “disappeared.” She doesn’t have the power of memory but she’s hiding someone in her house who does.
Increasingly important things begin to be banned: birds, fruit… and guess what else? It’s a novel about the trauma of loss.
We get to read excerpts from our heroine's latest novel about a woman who permanently loses her voice, so we have a story within a story that’s a metaphor for the ongoing horrors. She develops a love interest in her real life along with the woman in her story, so that helps keep the plot moving along.
A good story, and I think the book has the potential over time to become a classic of dystopian totalitarian literature along with others such as Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 and 1984.
A classic quote used in the book: “Men who start by burning books end up burning other men.”
I recently read and enjoyed another book by this Japanese author (b. 1962): The Housekeeper and the Professor. It too was about memory loss: an elderly professor who could retain recent memory only for an hour and a half.
Top photo on Honshu Island from thetimes.co.uk
Illustration from mexikaresistance.files.wordpress.com
The author from smh.com.au
February 23, 2020
Such a great concept but ended up being a very vague and kind of boring.
Read
May 27, 2020I still think that the premise of this book is really thought provoking as an extension (and perhaps even conclusion?) to Orwell's 1984 but the plot didn't pull it together for me. I left with a lot of questions and frustrations continually asking "why?" or "how?" We had a great discussion about it on the podcast though! https://anchor.fm/booksunbound/episod...
March 19, 2024
I initially like most dystopian novels, until their lustre wears off and I see that they are generally missing the point - as occurred to Aldous Huxley when he saw that his own Brave New World missed the point (the future being also positive), and so had to reimagine the future again in Island.
The point, of course, is that the future is not really dystopian. It is merely the present world some time down the road. And the future is what we will make that present to be in a new now. It will still be OUR present - filled with OUR own selves and values.
I owe that to Carlo Rovelli. He showed me that though the true nature of time is unascertainable, because it's purely relative, if we know who we are that knowledge won't change. And I think the words literary postmodernism owe infinitely more to Einstein than they do to James Joyce or Franz Kafka.
But our selves and values aren't relative. They are us. And disappearing Persons and Values - and not objects - are the REAL (unmentioned) subject of The Memory Police.
The Memory Police is a recently written Japanese novel which, like Brave New World, fails to see that the inner recreation of the old world is not an appropriate response to postmodernism, because we do not have to recreate anything.
We already have our own values. They won't change, if you take good care of them.
In this book the inner circle of 'good' memory retainers seem to have to WRITE about their memories as a way to counter The Object-Snatching Memory Police. So here we see that what they actually are recreating is not memory, but beloved persons and value. Objects are only incidental to value, therefore a poor symbol of dystopia.
Unless you're sentimentally materialistic.
But regardless, I LOVED the gently pervasive melancholy of this book.
The Memory we have of loved Persons and Objects is not solid, though, but porous. Memories never stay put in our minds anyway, as modern neuroscience shows. Disappearing objects are a poor gauge of value. Our values are not 'solid', but they're not porous. They're simply who we are.
They're us: Our inner identity.
***
I see now that I owe the crux of the preceding argument to my Christian beliefs. That faith has told me clearly that I am in the world, but not OF the world, and the other world religions follow suit - Buddha, for example, telling us to "make ourselves into islands."
The authorities of this world cannot change our VALUES.
Oh, the authorities may through misinformation techniques lead or link certain churches, temples or mosques in our minds to a political affiliation, which always muddies the waters of their believers' equanimity.
But they cannot change who we are. They cannot foist ethical materialism - bludgeoning us over the heads with "certain certainties" - or a devalued nihilism, for that matter, upon us.
So in that sense Yoko is quite right: OUR MEMORIES OF LOVED PERSONS AND OBJECTS CONTAIN THE SEEDS OF OUR REAL SELVES, AND OUR VALUES.
And If we are in a very real religious sense inwardly removed from the world...
Our real selves and values - regardless of the presence or absence of beloved people and objects - will always live on in our hearts.
The point, of course, is that the future is not really dystopian. It is merely the present world some time down the road. And the future is what we will make that present to be in a new now. It will still be OUR present - filled with OUR own selves and values.
I owe that to Carlo Rovelli. He showed me that though the true nature of time is unascertainable, because it's purely relative, if we know who we are that knowledge won't change. And I think the words literary postmodernism owe infinitely more to Einstein than they do to James Joyce or Franz Kafka.
But our selves and values aren't relative. They are us. And disappearing Persons and Values - and not objects - are the REAL (unmentioned) subject of The Memory Police.
The Memory Police is a recently written Japanese novel which, like Brave New World, fails to see that the inner recreation of the old world is not an appropriate response to postmodernism, because we do not have to recreate anything.
We already have our own values. They won't change, if you take good care of them.
In this book the inner circle of 'good' memory retainers seem to have to WRITE about their memories as a way to counter The Object-Snatching Memory Police. So here we see that what they actually are recreating is not memory, but beloved persons and value. Objects are only incidental to value, therefore a poor symbol of dystopia.
Unless you're sentimentally materialistic.
But regardless, I LOVED the gently pervasive melancholy of this book.
The Memory we have of loved Persons and Objects is not solid, though, but porous. Memories never stay put in our minds anyway, as modern neuroscience shows. Disappearing objects are a poor gauge of value. Our values are not 'solid', but they're not porous. They're simply who we are.
They're us: Our inner identity.
***
I see now that I owe the crux of the preceding argument to my Christian beliefs. That faith has told me clearly that I am in the world, but not OF the world, and the other world religions follow suit - Buddha, for example, telling us to "make ourselves into islands."
The authorities of this world cannot change our VALUES.
Oh, the authorities may through misinformation techniques lead or link certain churches, temples or mosques in our minds to a political affiliation, which always muddies the waters of their believers' equanimity.
But they cannot change who we are. They cannot foist ethical materialism - bludgeoning us over the heads with "certain certainties" - or a devalued nihilism, for that matter, upon us.
So in that sense Yoko is quite right: OUR MEMORIES OF LOVED PERSONS AND OBJECTS CONTAIN THE SEEDS OF OUR REAL SELVES, AND OUR VALUES.
And If we are in a very real religious sense inwardly removed from the world...
Our real selves and values - regardless of the presence or absence of beloved people and objects - will always live on in our hearts.
November 11, 2019
The Memory Police is one of my top ten books for 2019.
Originally published in 1994, and released in translation only this year, and with a decent marketing budget as evidenced by the stunning cover and many interviews and reviews, it is compelling. Like all of Ogawa’s works, it is also timeless. It may strike us as a novel of the moment because state surveillance is its backdrop. But Ogawa’s stories are about how people respond to their circumstances, to limitations What motivates them. What confuses them. What compels them to make this or that choice. Her language is calm, unexcited. She describes unnerving events with simplicity. Her words linger but don’t shout. Ogawa has written 20+ books and won multiple awards, but Memory Police is only her fifth to be published in English. All have been translated by Stephen Snyder, a professor of Japanese studies at Middlebury College. If you tend to avoid literature in translation, get over it for this one, please. Snyder’s translation is amazing.
The Memory Police is Japanese – not American - so our protagonist isn’t the heroic sort determined to defy the system. She is a writer living on an island that none are able to depart. Objects and concepts occasionally disappear – sometimes physically, sometimes the community’s collective understanding of them evaporates such that they remain in existence but meaningless to all. Ogawa offers no explanation for either the mechanism or the rules of disappearing. Disappearing is useful primarily for exploring the role of memory in how we become us, as individuals and as communities, and whether – if those memories are dismantled – we change, and to what extent. Our protagonist is calm. She goes along to get along. As a child, she lost her mother to the memory police. She’s in her early 20s now and a novelist. But now other objects are disappearing – music, roses, stories. Occasionally, people are taken away by the Memory Police and never seen again.
Because she fears for good reason that her editor, R, is at risk of being disappeared (in the South American manner familiar to all in the 1970s), she finds a way to hide him – with the assistance of a friend - in a room hidden between the floors of her home. The suggestion of Anne Frank, an inspiration Ogawa has flagged in multiple interviews, acts as a bit of distraction for the reader. R is the defender of community and individual memory, of the importance of writing and reading as a means of preserving the past and understanding who one is. Ogawa is ever the mistress of misdirection. As the pages turned, I worried unceasingly about R and the dog*. Meanwhile, in the moment I missed the forest.
At one point, our writer-protagonist is working on a story about a typist whose instructor interacts with her in ways that are at first dismaying, then baffling, and finally cruel. Her story is presented in segments, without any framing. One of the irresistible and confounding mysteries of The Memory Police is the significance of the story-within-a-story. I promise you, you’ll spend a lot of time contemplating how the two stories relate and perhaps arriving at a handful of possibilities. If you bring an ounce of humility to The Memory Police, you’ll remain a little uncomfortable and a tad uncertain about the interpretation you choose. I love that Ogawa leaves us with more questions than answers.
In a profile of Ogawa published August 12, 2019, the NYTimes included the following quote, “Ogawa considers herself an eavesdropper on her characters. ‘I just peeked into their world and took notes from what they were doing,’ she said.” Her eavesdropping is unparalleled. Enough to make a fan of a champion-dystopian-avoider like me.
*If you're worried about the dog,
Originally published in 1994, and released in translation only this year, and with a decent marketing budget as evidenced by the stunning cover and many interviews and reviews, it is compelling. Like all of Ogawa’s works, it is also timeless. It may strike us as a novel of the moment because state surveillance is its backdrop. But Ogawa’s stories are about how people respond to their circumstances, to limitations What motivates them. What confuses them. What compels them to make this or that choice. Her language is calm, unexcited. She describes unnerving events with simplicity. Her words linger but don’t shout. Ogawa has written 20+ books and won multiple awards, but Memory Police is only her fifth to be published in English. All have been translated by Stephen Snyder, a professor of Japanese studies at Middlebury College. If you tend to avoid literature in translation, get over it for this one, please. Snyder’s translation is amazing.
The Memory Police is Japanese – not American - so our protagonist isn’t the heroic sort determined to defy the system. She is a writer living on an island that none are able to depart. Objects and concepts occasionally disappear – sometimes physically, sometimes the community’s collective understanding of them evaporates such that they remain in existence but meaningless to all. Ogawa offers no explanation for either the mechanism or the rules of disappearing. Disappearing is useful primarily for exploring the role of memory in how we become us, as individuals and as communities, and whether – if those memories are dismantled – we change, and to what extent. Our protagonist is calm. She goes along to get along. As a child, she lost her mother to the memory police. She’s in her early 20s now and a novelist. But now other objects are disappearing – music, roses, stories. Occasionally, people are taken away by the Memory Police and never seen again.
Because she fears for good reason that her editor, R, is at risk of being disappeared (in the South American manner familiar to all in the 1970s), she finds a way to hide him – with the assistance of a friend - in a room hidden between the floors of her home. The suggestion of Anne Frank, an inspiration Ogawa has flagged in multiple interviews, acts as a bit of distraction for the reader. R is the defender of community and individual memory, of the importance of writing and reading as a means of preserving the past and understanding who one is. Ogawa is ever the mistress of misdirection. As the pages turned, I worried unceasingly about R and the dog*. Meanwhile, in the moment I missed the forest.
At one point, our writer-protagonist is working on a story about a typist whose instructor interacts with her in ways that are at first dismaying, then baffling, and finally cruel. Her story is presented in segments, without any framing. One of the irresistible and confounding mysteries of The Memory Police is the significance of the story-within-a-story. I promise you, you’ll spend a lot of time contemplating how the two stories relate and perhaps arriving at a handful of possibilities. If you bring an ounce of humility to The Memory Police, you’ll remain a little uncomfortable and a tad uncertain about the interpretation you choose. I love that Ogawa leaves us with more questions than answers.
In a profile of Ogawa published August 12, 2019, the NYTimes included the following quote, “Ogawa considers herself an eavesdropper on her characters. ‘I just peeked into their world and took notes from what they were doing,’ she said.” Her eavesdropping is unparalleled. Enough to make a fan of a champion-dystopian-avoider like me.
*If you're worried about the dog,
Read
August 15, 2019This book cannot be rated because it surpasses that structure of confinement that a star rating can give. I picked this book up from my library after seeing it in B&N and reading the blurb, “a haunting, Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance.” I was hooked from the beginning. It takes a lot for me to almost finish a book in one sitting, but this story was so haunting and compelling, like a sleepy nightmare unfolding before you while you are unable to look away.
Told in a way that relies heavily on the main character’s internal dialogue, this story follows an unnamed island full of obscure characters whose names don’t matter because it’s their existence and being that sticks with you the most. The lack of definitive details about the characters and the island itself, similar to 1984, is so striking and cryptic that I was drawn forward to read more because from the moment you begin this novel you know it won’t end well, and yet I read on.
I’m a sucker for a good, quiet drama that doesn’t offer definitive answers to the questions I had swirling in my mind. I loved how murky and foreboding this entire story was. I loved how we were thrust into the middle of a world already controlled by a higher being who never makes an appearance but looms over the entire narrative. I loved how each character’s history and existence itself was obscure in a way that didn’t make this story feel as though it were lacking in substance.
While this story may seem murky, it alludes to how easily we, as a society, are so quick to forget and toss aside memories and pieces of history to adjust to our current situations without questioning how easily we can let memories of the past float away from our minds.
I could write a thesis about how moving and stunning this story was, but I’ll leave it at that. This will be on my mind for years. I won’t let it escape my memory.
Told in a way that relies heavily on the main character’s internal dialogue, this story follows an unnamed island full of obscure characters whose names don’t matter because it’s their existence and being that sticks with you the most. The lack of definitive details about the characters and the island itself, similar to 1984, is so striking and cryptic that I was drawn forward to read more because from the moment you begin this novel you know it won’t end well, and yet I read on.
I’m a sucker for a good, quiet drama that doesn’t offer definitive answers to the questions I had swirling in my mind. I loved how murky and foreboding this entire story was. I loved how we were thrust into the middle of a world already controlled by a higher being who never makes an appearance but looms over the entire narrative. I loved how each character’s history and existence itself was obscure in a way that didn’t make this story feel as though it were lacking in substance.
While this story may seem murky, it alludes to how easily we, as a society, are so quick to forget and toss aside memories and pieces of history to adjust to our current situations without questioning how easily we can let memories of the past float away from our minds.
I could write a thesis about how moving and stunning this story was, but I’ll leave it at that. This will be on my mind for years. I won’t let it escape my memory.
November 2, 2022
Still, unsettling and meditative. Homes in on being oppressed and loss of memory, and how far a gliding scale can go. Rightfully shortlisted for the Booker International Prize
My soul seems to be breaking down. I said those last words cautiously, as though I were handing over a fragile object.
Dystopian vibes that reminded me of a lot of other classics in the genre
I knew somehow that she wasn’t actually crying. I knew somehow that she was too sad to cry - her tears were simply drops of liquid appearing on their own accord.
The narrator of the book lives on an island where persons forget items and concepts in a mysterious way, driving people to destroy the forgotten articles when they wake up and realise what they have lost. The atmosphere is dreamlike, or better said, nightmarish. Our main character is a novelist, which lead to a subplot reminiscent of The Blind Assassin from Margaret Atwood, while the forgetting reminded me also of The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. Due to this book being translated so late to English The Memory Police predates both.
A combination of a 1984, with vibes of Blindness in brutality, while the The Diary of Anne Frank also came to mind when I thought some more about this book.
What is a human, is a human still a human when you cut off an arm, a leg, his nose, the ears, when someone is completely paralyzed and has no way of expressing themselves? These where existential questions Yōko Ogawa raised with me.
Touching and poetic when roses disappear and the river fills up with rose petals for days.
And how would I handle the loss of things dear to me like books and photographs? (And only the corpses of burned books lit the sky)
Deeply touching when forgetting gets more and more invasive
Try as we might to understand each other, nothing changed for us. The more we talked, the sadder we became.
The forgetting is progressive, acquaintances need to flee to a safehouse for remembering too much because the memory police is on the prowl.
The narrator takes her editor in, hiding him in a small hidden room and loving him, but never really understanding him since his memories are intact.
Is the gradual increase of ever more forgetfulness a metaphor for getting older and dying (or possibly alzheimer)?
A cypher for crippling depression?
In the end I found this parable of sliding scales of what is bearable, until nothing remains, was profound and powerful and the nomination for the Booker International Prize is well deserved.
My soul seems to be breaking down. I said those last words cautiously, as though I were handing over a fragile object.
Dystopian vibes that reminded me of a lot of other classics in the genre
I knew somehow that she wasn’t actually crying. I knew somehow that she was too sad to cry - her tears were simply drops of liquid appearing on their own accord.
The narrator of the book lives on an island where persons forget items and concepts in a mysterious way, driving people to destroy the forgotten articles when they wake up and realise what they have lost. The atmosphere is dreamlike, or better said, nightmarish. Our main character is a novelist, which lead to a subplot reminiscent of The Blind Assassin from Margaret Atwood, while the forgetting reminded me also of The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. Due to this book being translated so late to English The Memory Police predates both.
A combination of a 1984, with vibes of Blindness in brutality, while the The Diary of Anne Frank also came to mind when I thought some more about this book.
What is a human, is a human still a human when you cut off an arm, a leg, his nose, the ears, when someone is completely paralyzed and has no way of expressing themselves? These where existential questions Yōko Ogawa raised with me.
Touching and poetic when roses disappear and the river fills up with rose petals for days.
And how would I handle the loss of things dear to me like books and photographs? (And only the corpses of burned books lit the sky)
Deeply touching when forgetting gets more and more invasive
Try as we might to understand each other, nothing changed for us. The more we talked, the sadder we became.
The forgetting is progressive, acquaintances need to flee to a safehouse for remembering too much because the memory police is on the prowl.
The narrator takes her editor in, hiding him in a small hidden room and loving him, but never really understanding him since his memories are intact.
Is the gradual increase of ever more forgetfulness a metaphor for getting older and dying (or possibly alzheimer)?
A cypher for crippling depression?
In the end I found this parable of sliding scales of what is bearable, until nothing remains, was profound and powerful and the nomination for the Booker International Prize is well deserved.
June 10, 2020
Shortlisted for International Booker prize 2020
This was the final book I read from the International Booker Prize shortlist. When I first finished the short novel I considered my reading experience to be of 4* but after more than a week (and no review) I realized my memory of my reading experience started to fade and my rating to lower a bit.
“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.”
I feel the same about this novel. What I am left with are faded feelings of quietness, sadness, discomfort, endearment for the character of the old man, anger for the complacence of the people when faced with the loss of memories and later of their own beings.
On an unnamed island, people are living under an oppressive regime and suffer some sort of amnesia, periodically forgetting all meaning and memories of an aspect/object. One time they forget about birds, another time photographs lose their meaning. The disappeared objects are either burned/drowned or continue to exist without anyone knowing what they are. However, some people do not forget anything and The Memory Police is hunting them and any person that is offering shelter. The main character, a woman novelist decides to help her editor, R, and hides him away in her home. She is helped by an old man, a former ferry pilot.
As a dystopia, I do not think the novel was anything special but it was more successful as a conveyor of moods. I was not indifferent while reading the story and the improbability of the subject did not matter as much as the atmosphere. The writing was simple, as if especially chosen to conspire with the loss of complexity in the life of the island’s inhabitants.
This was the final book I read from the International Booker Prize shortlist. When I first finished the short novel I considered my reading experience to be of 4* but after more than a week (and no review) I realized my memory of my reading experience started to fade and my rating to lower a bit.
“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.”
I feel the same about this novel. What I am left with are faded feelings of quietness, sadness, discomfort, endearment for the character of the old man, anger for the complacence of the people when faced with the loss of memories and later of their own beings.
On an unnamed island, people are living under an oppressive regime and suffer some sort of amnesia, periodically forgetting all meaning and memories of an aspect/object. One time they forget about birds, another time photographs lose their meaning. The disappeared objects are either burned/drowned or continue to exist without anyone knowing what they are. However, some people do not forget anything and The Memory Police is hunting them and any person that is offering shelter. The main character, a woman novelist decides to help her editor, R, and hides him away in her home. She is helped by an old man, a former ferry pilot.
As a dystopia, I do not think the novel was anything special but it was more successful as a conveyor of moods. I was not indifferent while reading the story and the improbability of the subject did not matter as much as the atmosphere. The writing was simple, as if especially chosen to conspire with the loss of complexity in the life of the island’s inhabitants.
August 27, 2019
I thought the premise for this was super cool, but the actual story lacked so much.
We enter a world in which things can disappear from both life and the minds of citizens. Roses? Gone. Birds? Gone. Hats? Gone. Novels? Gone.
No one knows where it goes, they just know it has left. They readjust their lives accordingly and move forward. Well, most do anyway. There are a select few who do not forget and those people are in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police.
I was so intrigued by this story but I felt like there was so much missing information, there was no history provided or any sort of explanation as to why society is like this. The purpose of the Memory Police, other than to terrorize the citizens, was never fully explored. I felt like a lot was missing from the story.
I also didn't enjoy the romance. It felt pointless and forced, overall adding nothing to the story. I wasn't moved or inspired by it and constantly wondered why the heck these characters were together. I also felt the same about the portion of the novel that contained our main character's novel. I didn't enjoy the story or felt like it added anything to the overall plot. In my opinion, it was more of a filler than anything else.
I feel like there was so much potential for this story but it missed the mark a little bit. While there were ideas I enjoyed, I felt like overall it may have been better suited as a short story without the pointless filler information.
We enter a world in which things can disappear from both life and the minds of citizens. Roses? Gone. Birds? Gone. Hats? Gone. Novels? Gone.
No one knows where it goes, they just know it has left. They readjust their lives accordingly and move forward. Well, most do anyway. There are a select few who do not forget and those people are in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police.
I was so intrigued by this story but I felt like there was so much missing information, there was no history provided or any sort of explanation as to why society is like this. The purpose of the Memory Police, other than to terrorize the citizens, was never fully explored. I felt like a lot was missing from the story.
I also didn't enjoy the romance. It felt pointless and forced, overall adding nothing to the story. I wasn't moved or inspired by it and constantly wondered why the heck these characters were together. I also felt the same about the portion of the novel that contained our main character's novel. I didn't enjoy the story or felt like it added anything to the overall plot. In my opinion, it was more of a filler than anything else.
I feel like there was so much potential for this story but it missed the mark a little bit. While there were ideas I enjoyed, I felt like overall it may have been better suited as a short story without the pointless filler information.
March 17, 2024
This book is one that I have no idea how to classify. It is a genre-bending thought-provoking masterpiece. It was originally published in 1994 then translated to English in 2019. When I looked up material about it, The New Yorker's Jia Tolentino described it under Stanford professor and critic Ramon Saldivar's definition of speculative realism, "literature that deploys the fantastic in the process of turning away from latent forms of daydream, delusion and denial, toward the manifold surface features of history."
Part allegory, part fable, part dystopian drama, The Memory Police is a timeless story about an unnamed island under Orwellian surveillance. On this island, random objects are "disappeared". Roses, calendars, emeralds, perfume. The object is disappeared by sending a kind of compulsion to destroy upon the inhabitants.
The second most striking thing I found in this novel was the lack of urgency to escape or "fight the man". Our narrator, a novelist currently working on a book with as harrowing subject matter as her story, is in no rush to escape. After the death of her parents, the disappearance of things she and her dearest friend, the Old Man, hold dear she just carries on living. The innate strength to be found in not losing your spirit at the hands of such a fascist state is almost admirable.
When her editor, R, reveals that he can still remember things, the narrator and the Old Man plot to hide him in a hidden room at the narrator's house. It is here that the book evokes memories of The Diary of Anne Frank.
As the story progresses, we also follow the narrator's procession of her novel about a typist who loses her voice and is trapped in a "castle tower" by her captor, her typing instructor. In this we can see the narrator explore her fate on the island. Her typist loses her voice, her ability to type, her hearing except only to hear the voice of her captor. Trapped in a hopeless state where the instructor pulls and prods, treating her like a marionette whose strings only he can control. This, along with the novel's lack of urgency and sublime voice, were quite jarring.
The book also contains a lot of heart and a lot of punch. There seemed to be a complacency, a benign acceptance of the fate of the island's inhabitants,
However, when I realised I was trying to make a Hunger Games out of a much more complicated book, I concluded that the spirit of revolution here is in the characters' innate kindness. This is wherein I observed the importance of the book lay. Small acts of kindness are sprinkled all across the book, coming almost instinctively to the characters. There was also spirit in hopelessness. Mining joy, purpose from the bleakness of being. Life here is conducted purposefully. There is rebellion in continuing to live. Of remaining tethered to your world yet refusing puppetry to the whims of a malevolent destiny.
In R's memories, they are able to create stories, joy, luck, warmth, feeling. When the island is overrun with winter, the narrator does her best to make sure her two friends are still well fed and well clothed. On one of the old man's birthdays, R gifts him a music box, a disappeared item. A memento that the Old Man holds on to. Constantly praising what a meaningful gift it is. Not because it's a preserved disappeared item but because R had saved it and decided to give it to him. Theirs was to love and be loved. For what else was there to do on the island.
As an existential nihilist, this book's surrealism delivered the requisite amount of existential dread. When R moved into the narrator's floorboards, he barely made any noise or took much space.
This book had me in knots. It's a kind of guide when experiencing secondhand the pain of others. Important things remain important things, no matter how much the world changes. It holds your hand, shrouding its pain through allegory for you not to be desensitized by the brutality of the state. It allows you to see that personified good can sprout even in the harshest of environments. Like lavender in gravel. This book made me cry. And left me with a chasm in my heart due to that ending. But it's one of the most impactful books I've ever had the privilege of reading.
Part allegory, part fable, part dystopian drama, The Memory Police is a timeless story about an unnamed island under Orwellian surveillance. On this island, random objects are "disappeared". Roses, calendars, emeralds, perfume. The object is disappeared by sending a kind of compulsion to destroy upon the inhabitants.
“The island is run by men who are determined to see things disappear. From their point of view, anything that fails to vanish when they say it should is inconceivable. So they force it to disappear with their own hands.”Then they forget the object. And finally, they forget that they had forgotten the object. "Order" is seen to by a fascist police force. The first duty of the Memory Police was to enforce the disappearances.
The second most striking thing I found in this novel was the lack of urgency to escape or "fight the man". Our narrator, a novelist currently working on a book with as harrowing subject matter as her story, is in no rush to escape. After the death of her parents, the disappearance of things she and her dearest friend, the Old Man, hold dear she just carries on living. The innate strength to be found in not losing your spirit at the hands of such a fascist state is almost admirable.
When her editor, R, reveals that he can still remember things, the narrator and the Old Man plot to hide him in a hidden room at the narrator's house. It is here that the book evokes memories of The Diary of Anne Frank.
As the story progresses, we also follow the narrator's procession of her novel about a typist who loses her voice and is trapped in a "castle tower" by her captor, her typing instructor. In this we can see the narrator explore her fate on the island. Her typist loses her voice, her ability to type, her hearing except only to hear the voice of her captor. Trapped in a hopeless state where the instructor pulls and prods, treating her like a marionette whose strings only he can control. This, along with the novel's lack of urgency and sublime voice, were quite jarring.
Nothing moved in this little tableau—no wind, no sign of life—with the sole exception of my breath, which labored quietly in the cold. Everything that had lost its purpose seemed to have been gathered together right here.
The book also contains a lot of heart and a lot of punch. There seemed to be a complacency, a benign acceptance of the fate of the island's inhabitants,
Silence fell around us all, as though we were steeling ourselves for the next disappearance, which would no doubt come—perhaps even tomorrow. So it was that evening came to the island.At one point, R and the narrator are discussing how it feels for her to lose a memory,
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.It made me wonder why they didn't fight back. Why didn't they try to orchestrate escape from the island? The Memory Police even destroyed the ferry and maps after a successful attempt to escape by unknown characters. So why didn't the narrator and her friends conspire to save their humanity? Perhaps overthrow The Memory Police?
However, when I realised I was trying to make a Hunger Games out of a much more complicated book, I concluded that the spirit of revolution here is in the characters' innate kindness. This is wherein I observed the importance of the book lay. Small acts of kindness are sprinkled all across the book, coming almost instinctively to the characters. There was also spirit in hopelessness. Mining joy, purpose from the bleakness of being. Life here is conducted purposefully. There is rebellion in continuing to live. Of remaining tethered to your world yet refusing puppetry to the whims of a malevolent destiny.
In R's memories, they are able to create stories, joy, luck, warmth, feeling. When the island is overrun with winter, the narrator does her best to make sure her two friends are still well fed and well clothed. On one of the old man's birthdays, R gifts him a music box, a disappeared item. A memento that the Old Man holds on to. Constantly praising what a meaningful gift it is. Not because it's a preserved disappeared item but because R had saved it and decided to give it to him. Theirs was to love and be loved. For what else was there to do on the island.
As an existential nihilist, this book's surrealism delivered the requisite amount of existential dread. When R moved into the narrator's floorboards, he barely made any noise or took much space.
No matter how hard I listened, there was never any sign of someone living under the floor, and yet this silence made me all the more conscious of his existence.I'm not one to debate the sureties of out of sight out of mind, but is it just possible that when you meet people, and you leave an impression, that negative space is what affirms your existence? Are your actions' indentations on life's fabrics such that when you're gone, the memory of you will be your legacy?
This book had me in knots. It's a kind of guide when experiencing secondhand the pain of others. Important things remain important things, no matter how much the world changes. It holds your hand, shrouding its pain through allegory for you not to be desensitized by the brutality of the state. It allows you to see that personified good can sprout even in the harshest of environments. Like lavender in gravel. This book made me cry. And left me with a chasm in my heart due to that ending. But it's one of the most impactful books I've ever had the privilege of reading.
February 14, 2020
Quiet and understated, The Memory Police reflects on what it means to remember the past in the face of state repression. The allegorical novel follows an unnamed writer living on a remote island locked in perpetual winter, ruled by an authoritarian gang of police who slowly banish residents’ memories of all they’ve ever known, from rose gardens to novels. Not all the residents forget, though, and those who don’t are rounded up and killed by the police; the story centers on the writer’s fraught attempt to hide inside her home her editor, who can remember everything the police outlaw and destroy. As with any quasi-allegory, the concept’s hazy, the characters one note, and the setting vague, but Ogawa writes clear, entrancing prose that’s compelling to read. The newly translated novel was written over two decades ago, and its tale of loss and repression in a land beset by climate chaos is especially resonant today, in the face of a warming world and ever-intensifying political turmoil.
December 5, 2022
Another wonderful story from Yoko Ogawa.
I kept on postponing reading this book. I thought the story was not attractive because of its name "The Memory police." It has nothing to do with the detective story.
A story telling the disappearance of some things one by one on an island. It reminds me that we should be thankful that we possess almost every basic thing now in this world.
We live meaningfully because we have memories. We will not experience living without memories.
Most of the things that exist in our life have sentimental values.
We must be grateful from now onwards and things will disappear one by one from now on including relatives friends or ourselves. This is a fact that we cannot avoid.
Enjoy and feel every moment we live.
Live life to the fullest because it only happens once.
I kept on postponing reading this book. I thought the story was not attractive because of its name "The Memory police." It has nothing to do with the detective story.
A story telling the disappearance of some things one by one on an island. It reminds me that we should be thankful that we possess almost every basic thing now in this world.
We live meaningfully because we have memories. We will not experience living without memories.
Most of the things that exist in our life have sentimental values.
We must be grateful from now onwards and things will disappear one by one from now on including relatives friends or ourselves. This is a fact that we cannot avoid.
Enjoy and feel every moment we live.
Live life to the fullest because it only happens once.
February 12, 2020
Real Rating: 2.5* of five
This book is indicative of a problem that I'm having. It's a great idea, it's a very moody and atmospheric book, and it doesn't have an identity: does it want to be a horror novel, a dystopian oppression-is-bad tract, or a metaphorically rich fable/take-down of Western culture?
It, and therefore I, do not know.
It seems to me that a significant number of books published at this moment either are, or perceived to be, similarly multifocal. (That white lady's dirt book, for example, had thriller elements but also social-message novel elements so it was savaged by people who would have ignored a "lesser" work like a thriller.) It does no one any good to fail to find a focus. Plenty of works can combine genres. It must, in those case, feel natural and like it was done that way on purpose, to make the grade as a story.
This book doesn't feel like that. It feels instead like a pretty meditation on how deeply nasty humans are that more or less accidentally ended up making a sociopolitical point. I don't have any way to know if that was a feature or a bug; I only know it kept me from getting absorbed in the story and that, my friends, is annoying as hell.
This book is indicative of a problem that I'm having. It's a great idea, it's a very moody and atmospheric book, and it doesn't have an identity: does it want to be a horror novel, a dystopian oppression-is-bad tract, or a metaphorically rich fable/take-down of Western culture?
It, and therefore I, do not know.
It seems to me that a significant number of books published at this moment either are, or perceived to be, similarly multifocal. (That white lady's dirt book, for example, had thriller elements but also social-message novel elements so it was savaged by people who would have ignored a "lesser" work like a thriller.) It does no one any good to fail to find a focus. Plenty of works can combine genres. It must, in those case, feel natural and like it was done that way on purpose, to make the grade as a story.
This book doesn't feel like that. It feels instead like a pretty meditation on how deeply nasty humans are that more or less accidentally ended up making a sociopolitical point. I don't have any way to know if that was a feature or a bug; I only know it kept me from getting absorbed in the story and that, my friends, is annoying as hell.
December 14, 2019
It is ages since I read '1984', but all my memoeries of reading this novel returned to me while I became engrossed in The Memory Police.
An island where everything gradually disappears and where everybody is under surveillance of the Memory Police ... Not everybody, however, notices that the world around them is changing, and those who do, seek to preserve what they can, and in this way become the enemy.
Even in the totalitarian states people were not deprived of what they cherished: memories of their lives and memories of what things were. The idea Ms Ogawa had for this novel is terrifying ...
This novel was published in 1994 in Japanese, and I am surprised it has taken several decades to have it translated into English. Fortunately, it is available now, and I hope there will be more translations.
I am planning to read more of Ms Ogawa's books, probably in Polish,
An island where everything gradually disappears and where everybody is under surveillance of the Memory Police ... Not everybody, however, notices that the world around them is changing, and those who do, seek to preserve what they can, and in this way become the enemy.
Even in the totalitarian states people were not deprived of what they cherished: memories of their lives and memories of what things were. The idea Ms Ogawa had for this novel is terrifying ...
This novel was published in 1994 in Japanese, and I am surprised it has taken several decades to have it translated into English. Fortunately, it is available now, and I hope there will be more translations.
I am planning to read more of Ms Ogawa's books, probably in Polish,
April 3, 2020
Now Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020
Who we are strongly depends on our past experiences and the reality that has surrounded us, so what happens if, bit by bit, this reality is made to disappear, and with it the memories ingrained in our hearts? In Yoko Ogawa's highly allegorical novel, the enigmatic "memory police" is controlling the population of a remote island, subjugating the inhabitants by continually forcing them to destroy and forget things like roses, perfume or birds, and all memories attached to them. Every lost memory leaves a new hole in people's hearts, but those who won't forget will be taken away and might get killed. How long can a person endure when those trying to control their mind eat away at their heart?
Our protagonist is an unnamed young novelist, thus a person who professionally creates coherence and identity, who aims to preserve and represent the world in narratives. When the memory police prepares to arrest her editor because he is unable to erase his memories, she hides him in her home, aided by an old man she befriended. Secretly, she tries to proceed working on her latest novel about a woman who has lost her voice - this whole novel-within-the-novel is twisting and reflecting the narrated world, asking questions about expression (losing your voice and losing your memory), freedom (being phsyically and psychologically captured), and death (losing your identity and losing your phsyical self). In all constellations Ogawa presents, I was fascinated by the protagonists' coping mechanisms, which you could often just as well call self-betrayal - this text is also a meditation on the workings of the mind under the conditions of authoritarian terror or human cruelty.
In this novel, a lot remains unexplained, e.g. why some people can and others can't forget as ordered by the memory police, what the ultimate goal of the memory police is (if they even have one beyond total control), or who their bosses are. Sometimes, I also felt like the author wasn't able to stringently employ her narrative concept, because how should the characters refer to things after they have disappeared? On top of that, there is the theme of climate change hovering in the background, but it isn't coherently tied into the main storyline. Still, these factor do not diminish the impact of the text, which more than anything is set up to be an allegory. In this respect, Ogawa's work reminded me of the wonderful Han Kang.
"The new cavities in my heart search for things to burn. They drive me to burn things and I can only stop when everything is in ashes", explains the narrator's editor at one point. This book contains numerous sentences like this one, investigating the relationship between memory, feelings, freedom and identity. A very worthwhile read, cleverly constructed and rendered with a lot of poetic sensibility.
Who we are strongly depends on our past experiences and the reality that has surrounded us, so what happens if, bit by bit, this reality is made to disappear, and with it the memories ingrained in our hearts? In Yoko Ogawa's highly allegorical novel, the enigmatic "memory police" is controlling the population of a remote island, subjugating the inhabitants by continually forcing them to destroy and forget things like roses, perfume or birds, and all memories attached to them. Every lost memory leaves a new hole in people's hearts, but those who won't forget will be taken away and might get killed. How long can a person endure when those trying to control their mind eat away at their heart?
Our protagonist is an unnamed young novelist, thus a person who professionally creates coherence and identity, who aims to preserve and represent the world in narratives. When the memory police prepares to arrest her editor because he is unable to erase his memories, she hides him in her home, aided by an old man she befriended. Secretly, she tries to proceed working on her latest novel about a woman who has lost her voice - this whole novel-within-the-novel is twisting and reflecting the narrated world, asking questions about expression (losing your voice and losing your memory), freedom (being phsyically and psychologically captured), and death (losing your identity and losing your phsyical self). In all constellations Ogawa presents, I was fascinated by the protagonists' coping mechanisms, which you could often just as well call self-betrayal - this text is also a meditation on the workings of the mind under the conditions of authoritarian terror or human cruelty.
In this novel, a lot remains unexplained, e.g. why some people can and others can't forget as ordered by the memory police, what the ultimate goal of the memory police is (if they even have one beyond total control), or who their bosses are. Sometimes, I also felt like the author wasn't able to stringently employ her narrative concept, because how should the characters refer to things after they have disappeared? On top of that, there is the theme of climate change hovering in the background, but it isn't coherently tied into the main storyline. Still, these factor do not diminish the impact of the text, which more than anything is set up to be an allegory. In this respect, Ogawa's work reminded me of the wonderful Han Kang.
"The new cavities in my heart search for things to burn. They drive me to burn things and I can only stop when everything is in ashes", explains the narrator's editor at one point. This book contains numerous sentences like this one, investigating the relationship between memory, feelings, freedom and identity. A very worthwhile read, cleverly constructed and rendered with a lot of poetic sensibility.
July 4, 2020
“But as things got thinner, more full of holes, our hearts got thinner, too, diluted somehow. I suppose that kept things in balance.”
This was an odd book, reminiscent of Fahrenheit 451. We are on an unnamed island, with an unnamed author and her unnamed editor and unnamed elderly friend. At the orders of the Memory Police, things disappear forever. Hats, calendars, novels. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what gets "disappeared". Perhaps names too have already disappeared by the time we enter the story.
It is a slow read and I mostly enjoyed it. Towards the end, however, it felt too repetitive of all that came before, keeping this from receiving 5 stars. The author's writing is brilliant and I love how the novel makes you think about memory.
Who are we without our memories? How many memories can a person lose and still be themselves?
It's an allegorical tale showing the transience of not just our memories but ourselves and the people around us. The impermanence of life.
I mostly enjoyed this except for the last part when I began to grow weary. The other thing that keeps this from receiving 5 stars is that nothing is ever explained.
I want to know why the Memory Police were disappearing things and I want to know how. Neither of these are addressed and it left me feeling unsatisfied with the book.
Still worth a read, if for nothing else than the beauty of the prose and the questions it inspires.
This was an odd book, reminiscent of Fahrenheit 451. We are on an unnamed island, with an unnamed author and her unnamed editor and unnamed elderly friend. At the orders of the Memory Police, things disappear forever. Hats, calendars, novels. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what gets "disappeared". Perhaps names too have already disappeared by the time we enter the story.
It is a slow read and I mostly enjoyed it. Towards the end, however, it felt too repetitive of all that came before, keeping this from receiving 5 stars. The author's writing is brilliant and I love how the novel makes you think about memory.
Who are we without our memories? How many memories can a person lose and still be themselves?
It's an allegorical tale showing the transience of not just our memories but ourselves and the people around us. The impermanence of life.
I mostly enjoyed this except for the last part when I began to grow weary. The other thing that keeps this from receiving 5 stars is that nothing is ever explained.
I want to know why the Memory Police were disappearing things and I want to know how. Neither of these are addressed and it left me feeling unsatisfied with the book.
Still worth a read, if for nothing else than the beauty of the prose and the questions it inspires.
April 18, 2020
The Memory Police are an arm of a totalitarian state enforcing its rules, so the obvious comparison for this novel is 1984. But in this book, the citizens aren’t just pretending they’ve always been at war with Eurasia. Here, objects like birds or green beans or roses somehow truly disappear almost overnight, and all but a few people quickly forget that such objects ever even existed.
How this process of disappearances and lost memories is occurring is left unexplained, and was the beginning of my frustration with the story. I just couldn’t piece together what this story was truly about. It’s atmospheric, and it definitely has an Eastern feel. But for a book positioned as being about the power and fearsomeness of totalitarian regimes, the regime is neither revealed nor particularly the focus of the story. I’m left primarily feeling that the book was about how we lose the ability to communicate when we lose shared experience and knowledge, and the danger that lost communication leaves humanity in from both the natural world and other people who mean to control us—but I really have no idea.
I’ve seen other reviews compare The Memory Police to 1984 (one of my all-time favorites) and Exit West (which I also loved). But to me, it much more closely resembled Blindness, another beloved book—by a Nobel Laureate no less—that I just didn’t like at all. I know I’m in the minority here, but this book fell flat for me.
How this process of disappearances and lost memories is occurring is left unexplained, and was the beginning of my frustration with the story. I just couldn’t piece together what this story was truly about. It’s atmospheric, and it definitely has an Eastern feel. But for a book positioned as being about the power and fearsomeness of totalitarian regimes, the regime is neither revealed nor particularly the focus of the story. I’m left primarily feeling that the book was about how we lose the ability to communicate when we lose shared experience and knowledge, and the danger that lost communication leaves humanity in from both the natural world and other people who mean to control us—but I really have no idea.
I’ve seen other reviews compare The Memory Police to 1984 (one of my all-time favorites) and Exit West (which I also loved). But to me, it much more closely resembled Blindness, another beloved book—by a Nobel Laureate no less—that I just didn’t like at all. I know I’m in the minority here, but this book fell flat for me.
September 16, 2019
4.5 rounded up.
https://www.readingavidly.com/2019/09...
It wasn't too long after starting this book before I noticed something strange about it. By page 98, it hit me that for a story labeled as "Orwellian," it was written in a surprisingly quiet tone. Without discounting the bizarre events recounted in this book, the understated style alone was actually disturbing in its own right, and I experienced a sort of weird off-kilteredness throughout the story.
Actually, the book works on two very different levels. The "Orwellian" tag is appropriate given how this novel is written, but there is much more going on here in terms of memory and the self. As author Silvia Moreno-Garcia says in her NPR review of this novel,
"If you view The Memory Police as one big, fat metaphor for state control -- and I'm sure many people will see it as that -- you'll probably find more pleasure in it than if you attempt to consider it in other terms."
It works both ways; while reading the novel and attempting to tie into it thematically, the thought of what the Memory Police might cause to disappear next haunted me right up until the ending, of which I'll say only that it might just leave people scratching their heads with a big WHAT? standing out in their minds.
Pay attention to the novel within the novel, also surreal but telling. Most importantly of all, if you can just accept that things are the way they are with no explanation as to why, the reading of it will be that much more of an experience in the long run. I finished this book well over a week ago one morning about 2 a.m., laid there thinking about it for another two hours, and it hasn't left my head yet. It is one of the strangest books I've read, but honestly, for me, that's part of the appeal.
Recommended with the caveat that this is a novel that will likely leave readers with more questions than answers; there is no explanation as to the why of things, described here as "the laws of the island;" they just are. While it may not be everyone's cup of tea, I loved this book; then again, I'm very much drawn to novels that I've labeled "strange with purpose," so I'm not surprised.
https://www.readingavidly.com/2019/09...
It wasn't too long after starting this book before I noticed something strange about it. By page 98, it hit me that for a story labeled as "Orwellian," it was written in a surprisingly quiet tone. Without discounting the bizarre events recounted in this book, the understated style alone was actually disturbing in its own right, and I experienced a sort of weird off-kilteredness throughout the story.
Actually, the book works on two very different levels. The "Orwellian" tag is appropriate given how this novel is written, but there is much more going on here in terms of memory and the self. As author Silvia Moreno-Garcia says in her NPR review of this novel,
"If you view The Memory Police as one big, fat metaphor for state control -- and I'm sure many people will see it as that -- you'll probably find more pleasure in it than if you attempt to consider it in other terms."
It works both ways; while reading the novel and attempting to tie into it thematically, the thought of what the Memory Police might cause to disappear next haunted me right up until the ending, of which I'll say only that it might just leave people scratching their heads with a big WHAT? standing out in their minds.
Pay attention to the novel within the novel, also surreal but telling. Most importantly of all, if you can just accept that things are the way they are with no explanation as to why, the reading of it will be that much more of an experience in the long run. I finished this book well over a week ago one morning about 2 a.m., laid there thinking about it for another two hours, and it hasn't left my head yet. It is one of the strangest books I've read, but honestly, for me, that's part of the appeal.
Recommended with the caveat that this is a novel that will likely leave readers with more questions than answers; there is no explanation as to the why of things, described here as "the laws of the island;" they just are. While it may not be everyone's cup of tea, I loved this book; then again, I'm very much drawn to novels that I've labeled "strange with purpose," so I'm not surprised.
December 21, 2019
George Orwell meets Haruki Murakami in this disturbing and unsettling but also weird and wonderful story about an island where things keep on disappearing and can’t be remembered.
In the island, to remember is to be in danger.
I loved the gentle and simple prose. I loved the originality and unpredictability of the plot. I loved the wisdom. I loved the claustrophobic feeling. I loved the imagery and the weirdness and how thought provoking everything was. And most of all I loved the fact that I didn’t get any answers at all.
I admit I’m a bit scared of the Memory Police but I’m going to keep this story in my memory anyway, for as long as I can.
Screw you, Memory Police!!!
“(...) in a world turned upside down, things I thought were mine and mine alone can be taken away much more easily than I would have imagined. If my body were cut up in pieces and those pieces mixed with those of other bodies, and then if someone told me, “Find your left eye,” I suppose it would be difficult to do so.”
In the island, to remember is to be in danger.
I loved the gentle and simple prose. I loved the originality and unpredictability of the plot. I loved the wisdom. I loved the claustrophobic feeling. I loved the imagery and the weirdness and how thought provoking everything was. And most of all I loved the fact that I didn’t get any answers at all.
I admit I’m a bit scared of the Memory Police but I’m going to keep this story in my memory anyway, for as long as I can.
Screw you, Memory Police!!!
“(...) in a world turned upside down, things I thought were mine and mine alone can be taken away much more easily than I would have imagined. If my body were cut up in pieces and those pieces mixed with those of other bodies, and then if someone told me, “Find your left eye,” I suppose it would be difficult to do so.”
June 21, 2020
A memorable novel about the loss of memory, The Memory Police is a dystopian tale, but there are no rescuers plotting to save everyone. The town's people who are undergoing the loss of common, everyday objects are very passive about their own ability to stop what is happening. As these things are disappeared, so are their owners' memories of them. They can't remember what a rose is, what it looks like or what it smells like, how it feels.
Ogawa writes with a tranquil, surreal tone. Her characters have no real names. The main protagonist is a 20ish, female writer who lives alone and has few friends, she is never named. Her closest friend is an old man who lives on a disused ferry and is always referred to as the old man. Her editor, another friend is called R. They all exist on an unnamed island in which the disappearance of things and their memories are by extension the loss of their souls.
The Memory Police are there to ensure that the items are truly gone. There are a few people who don't lose their memories. If found out, they are taken away as well. I went back and forth between 3 and 4 stars, but rounded up because of the meaningful question that the author attempts to resolve, without our memories, what are we?
Ogawa writes with a tranquil, surreal tone. Her characters have no real names. The main protagonist is a 20ish, female writer who lives alone and has few friends, she is never named. Her closest friend is an old man who lives on a disused ferry and is always referred to as the old man. Her editor, another friend is called R. They all exist on an unnamed island in which the disappearance of things and their memories are by extension the loss of their souls.
The Memory Police are there to ensure that the items are truly gone. There are a few people who don't lose their memories. If found out, they are taken away as well. I went back and forth between 3 and 4 stars, but rounded up because of the meaningful question that the author attempts to resolve, without our memories, what are we?
February 5, 2020
There is this Japanese idea of "Mono no aware" or the "pathos of things." How ephemeral beauty is, how everything is transient and fleeting - and the sadness that accompanies that realization. And that sentiment pervades the book as things disappear. Something in the air changes, and on waking the people stumble outside to understand what has been removed from their lives. One morning the rivers are covered in petals slowly floating out to sea as roses join hats, ferries, and birds as the thing that is gone. Soon the very memory of it disappears.
But then it takes a turn to the dystopian. Jackbooted thugs called Memory Police appear to ensure that newly forgotten thing is truly eradicated. They are there when novels are disappeared, stoking massive pyres of books, setting the library ablaze, ransacking homes looking for things that should be forgotten and carting away those that still remember.
And as it nears the end it takes on an absurdist tone that borders on the horrifying but is still presented in a calm, almost flat affect that pervades this particular translation.
It's such an open-ended read that defies easy categorization and that is both frustrating - I mean what's with the typewriter story? - and it's biggest strength. It allows for a myriad of interpretations that hinge on the personal. It is a story reflecting the Cultural Revolution, speaks to Trump's America, harkens back to sanctions against Yugoslavia and is a metaphor for social media and the very act of writing. Or maybe it's just my need to imbue the whisper quiet story with some larger narrative to explain its nagging persistence.
But then it takes a turn to the dystopian. Jackbooted thugs called Memory Police appear to ensure that newly forgotten thing is truly eradicated. They are there when novels are disappeared, stoking massive pyres of books, setting the library ablaze, ransacking homes looking for things that should be forgotten and carting away those that still remember.
And as it nears the end it takes on an absurdist tone that borders on the horrifying but is still presented in a calm, almost flat affect that pervades this particular translation.
It's such an open-ended read that defies easy categorization and that is both frustrating - I mean what's with the typewriter story? - and it's biggest strength. It allows for a myriad of interpretations that hinge on the personal. It is a story reflecting the Cultural Revolution, speaks to Trump's America, harkens back to sanctions against Yugoslavia and is a metaphor for social media and the very act of writing. Or maybe it's just my need to imbue the whisper quiet story with some larger narrative to explain its nagging persistence.
January 14, 2020
One by one, things are disappearing, and with them, the memory of them. It's as though these things never existed. Holding onto memories is to run afoul of the Memory Police. You want to avoid that at all costs. The Memory Police have a way of homing in on the ones who remember, and those unfortunates are taken away. Do not expect to see them again.
Haunting and surreal. One day you wake up and the songbirds are gone, then the roses vanish. You are right to fear what might come next. If books disappear, can words be far behind? What if forgetting is just the start of decay in the heart?
Haunting and surreal. One day you wake up and the songbirds are gone, then the roses vanish. You are right to fear what might come next. If books disappear, can words be far behind? What if forgetting is just the start of decay in the heart?
August 15, 2020
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020!
Every page of this book was like reliving the queer feeling I usually try to fight on waking up. I hate waking up, I hate slowly assembling my consciousness and rationality while still trying to grasp those wisps of dreams that linger in my mind like the remnants of some illogical, irrational, gravity defying, conservation violating world that only my subconscious mind is allowed in. It always feels as though I'm leaving something important behind, some sort of divine knowledge. I break my focus for two seconds and these wisps also disappear, and only a notion of an impenetrable world remains.
Assuming there is a connection, however vague, between our sense of self and the objects that surround us, what happens to the self if these objects abruptly disappear, leaving behind just a thin, flimsy reflection in the deep recesses of our minds? We have no memory whatsoever of these objects, but a first glance of them does spark a vague recognition only to be swallowed up immediately, and is replaced by an immense sense of loss and confusion.
But in a world turned upside down, things I thought were mine and mine alone can be taken away much more easily than I would have imagined.
The inconceivability of non-existence is a haunting theme throughout the book. On an island where objects disappear randomly and retaining any memory of them is a crime, the people live in a murky, surreal state of scarcity and fear. Our unnamed protagonist often contemplates the inevitable disappearance of her very self, her body and tries to structure her complicated emotions by writing novels which themselves center around loss and the acceptance of loss.
What I found to be most striking in this book were the anomalies, the people who remember, who hide (and often do not succeed) from the aggressive force of the 'memory police'. Survival for them is a complex play, a tricky matter of concealing their retained memories and intact perception in a world whose edges are slowly crumbling away.
Although marketed as a dystopian novel, this book is much more than that. It deals with many important themes: the transformation of a world from efflugent to derelict (given the current state of world affairs, this is probably something we will have to deal with soon), the wiping away of identity, the oppressive forces that impose upon us a life of suffering, the struggle to retain a sense of self despite massive irreversible changes, and of course love.
Stray observation: I think Yoko Ogawa has a thing for birthdays (can't blame her). There are simple yet elegant birthday celebrations in both The Housekeeper and the Professor and The Memory Police, although strangely, they are both immediately followed by anxiety inducing storylines.
Every page of this book was like reliving the queer feeling I usually try to fight on waking up. I hate waking up, I hate slowly assembling my consciousness and rationality while still trying to grasp those wisps of dreams that linger in my mind like the remnants of some illogical, irrational, gravity defying, conservation violating world that only my subconscious mind is allowed in. It always feels as though I'm leaving something important behind, some sort of divine knowledge. I break my focus for two seconds and these wisps also disappear, and only a notion of an impenetrable world remains.
Assuming there is a connection, however vague, between our sense of self and the objects that surround us, what happens to the self if these objects abruptly disappear, leaving behind just a thin, flimsy reflection in the deep recesses of our minds? We have no memory whatsoever of these objects, but a first glance of them does spark a vague recognition only to be swallowed up immediately, and is replaced by an immense sense of loss and confusion.
But in a world turned upside down, things I thought were mine and mine alone can be taken away much more easily than I would have imagined.
The inconceivability of non-existence is a haunting theme throughout the book. On an island where objects disappear randomly and retaining any memory of them is a crime, the people live in a murky, surreal state of scarcity and fear. Our unnamed protagonist often contemplates the inevitable disappearance of her very self, her body and tries to structure her complicated emotions by writing novels which themselves center around loss and the acceptance of loss.
What I found to be most striking in this book were the anomalies, the people who remember, who hide (and often do not succeed) from the aggressive force of the 'memory police'. Survival for them is a complex play, a tricky matter of concealing their retained memories and intact perception in a world whose edges are slowly crumbling away.
Although marketed as a dystopian novel, this book is much more than that. It deals with many important themes: the transformation of a world from efflugent to derelict (given the current state of world affairs, this is probably something we will have to deal with soon), the wiping away of identity, the oppressive forces that impose upon us a life of suffering, the struggle to retain a sense of self despite massive irreversible changes, and of course love.
Stray observation: I think Yoko Ogawa has a thing for birthdays (can't blame her). There are simple yet elegant birthday celebrations in both The Housekeeper and the Professor and The Memory Police, although strangely, they are both immediately followed by anxiety inducing storylines.
December 20, 2020
What a beautifully sad book. Like someone here said, this book has many levels. Some of them visual and some that are subconscious. It probably touched the latter in me, one night after reading it I was dreaming about it intensively, trying to solve the mystery of the titular memory police. Must I say I never solved it.
I guess it was an intensive experience. While nothing extremely spectacular happened in the book, there was a certain tension. While I was definitely sure that something bad was going to happen, I never knew where it was coming from. And when it happened, it wasn't what I expected. Very unusual, very atmospheric book. An unexpected quiet page turner. 5 stars.
I guess it was an intensive experience. While nothing extremely spectacular happened in the book, there was a certain tension. While I was definitely sure that something bad was going to happen, I never knew where it was coming from. And when it happened, it wasn't what I expected. Very unusual, very atmospheric book. An unexpected quiet page turner. 5 stars.
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