Sunday, January 19, 2020

Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police ***

The title and flap copy for The Memory Police suggest that the novel is "about the terrors of state surveillance," but I don't think that's a proper characterization. Objects are disappearing on an unnamed island—hats, birds, calendars—and the Memory Police come for those who don't forget the disappeared things. However, the disappearances appear to be a natural process not a state-sponsored one and the people are confused or apathetic rather than terrified.

The book introduces many ideas and images concerning our relationship with objects, for example the way objects cease to exist once our emotional attachment to them and their use is gone. Disappearances happen all the time in the normal course of change (pay phones, CD players, coworkers); are we supposed to lament these losses as a constricting of our souls? We also lose memories—and the objects they refer to—as we age. In The Memory Police, the narrator tries to conserve memories by hiding her editor in a secret room that soon becomes a repository of forgotten objects and a comforting retreat. Why does she do that, and why do the Memory Police care if some people don't forget things?

This enigmatic book offers many tantalizing allegories, but they never built into a larger whole for me. Is that intentional or did I miss somethings? Is it because of a cultural difference between me and the Japanese author? I'm tempted to say The Memory Police would be great for sparking conversation at a book club, except I know that most readers aren't interested in discussing unsolved mysteries.

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