Review of THE MEMORY POLICE
Dystopia coming to the rescue of the novel ... not for the first time.
Sag Harbor Books is on my top ten bookstore list. The store’s selection is as well curated as any I have found outside of John Sandoe in London. Like Sandoe, the lack of space requires curation and there lies the real potential for genius in a bookstore. This book was highly recommended by the staff and almost won a Booker so I grabbed it. Climate change, artificial intelligence, and the rise of frightening leaders has led to a flood of dystopic novels. In fact, the existential dread of our times may be just what was needed to rescue novels from their gradual slide into a solipsistic superficiality. This book is a compelling Orwell knock off evocatively located in the Pacific Northwest. It is not Ishiguro’s masterpiece, Klara and the Sun. It is not quite up to the recent Emily St. John Mandel trilogy though clearly the potential is there. Regardless, read it on a long flight or during our next lockdown. It is a very good first novel.
THE MEMORY POLICE
Yoko Ogawa
2020 288 pages