Book Review: The Memory of Animals

 

Book Review: The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller

Goodreads Description: In the face of a pandemic, an unprepared world scrambles to escape the mysterious disease’s devastating symptoms: sensory damage, memory loss, death. Neffy, a disgraced and desperately indebted twenty-seven-year-old marine biologist, registers for an experimental vaccine trial in London―perhaps humanity’s last hope for a cure. Though isolated from the chaos outside, she and the other volunteers―Rachel, Leon, Yahiko, and Piper―cannot hide from the mistakes that led them there.

As London descends into chaos outside the hospital windows, Neffy befriends Leon, who before the pandemic had been working on a controversial technology that allows users to revisit their memories. She withdraws into projections of her past―a childhood bisected by divorce; a recent love affair; her obsessive research with octopuses and the one mistake that ended her career. The lines between past, present, and future begin to blur, and Neffy is left with defining questions: Who can she trust? Why can’t she forgive herself? How should she live, if she survives?

My Review: Written in the wake of Covid, this novel captures the emotional uncertainty of quarantine and ramps it up to a nightmarish, apocalyptic extreme. It strikes an interesting balance between the external and internal - between the mystery of Neffy's past and the mounting apocalypse outside her window. While this book has speculative elements, it's a literary novel first and foremost, with most of the narrative focused on reflection and introspection. The characters do eventually contend with the chaos outside, but the climax primarily revolves around the emotional and internal conflicts, rather than large scale action. 

This book has excellent tension and pacing. The narrative flip-flops between the past and the present at just the right moments, creating a series of mini-cliffhangers that kept me devouring pages. At the beginning of the book, I found the flashbacks to be the most engaging part of the story, but near the end, it was the present timeline that I was eager to return to, which mirrors their roles in the story. Neffy retreats into her memories at the beginning of the novel as a form of escapism, but eventually it becomes a maladaptive coping strategy which ends up taking her away from what she needs to focus on. I'm curious if other readers felt the same way towards the flashbacks, because the effect certainly seems purposeful, but maybe that was just my experience while reading. 

I would recommend this book on vibes alone, because the writing is GORGEOUS! The atmosphere, the prose, the very likeable and very flawed people trapped together. The climax doubles as a reveal, where the people we thought we knew turn out to have committed heinous acts out of fear, yet in order to survive the very real apocalypse outside, Neffy still has to find a way to work with these people. The end comes with this loss of innocence, yet despite everything, Neffy is able to pull her crew together and forge ahead. Even in the face of tremendous uncertainty, loss, and betrayal, the book seems to say: we will persevere and life will go on. I found that really beautiful. 

TL;DR: 5/5 stars. An introspective sci-fi that explores the psychological and interpersonal effects of quarantine.

Book Review: Self-Portrait With Nothing

 

Self-Portrait With Nothing by Aimee Pokwatka 

Goodreads Description: Abandoned as an infant on the local veterinarian’s front porch, Pepper Rafferty was raised by two loving mothers, and now at thirty-six is married to the stable, supportive Ike. She’s never told anyone that at fifteen she discovered the identity of her biological mother.

That’s because her birth mother is Ula Frost, a reclusive painter famous for the outrageous claims that her portraits summon their subjects’ doppelgangers from parallel universes.

Researching the rumors, Pepper couldn’t help but wonder: Was there a parallel universe in which she was more confident, more accomplished, better able to accept love? A universe in which Ula decided she was worth keeping? A universe in which Ula’s rejection didn’t still hurt too much to share?

My Review: What a weird little book. 

If I had to sum up this book in a single word, it would be: contrived. Everything in this book is so forced that it was difficult to read at times. Characters often acted against their own established motivation in order to advance the plot. Pepper, the main character, acts on flimsy assumptions that turn out to be correct, making it feel like she's pulling answers out of thin air. She also comes across as a Mary-Sue in the sense that nearly every character falls over themselves to help her. Characters she's never met approach her with critical plot information because she "seems nice." Some even wait on her hand and foot, literally, like in the scene where a supporting character rubs Pepper's feet. Her boyfriend has no life outside her, people fall over themselves to help her for no reason-- after a certain point, it all started to feel a little narcissistic. Perhaps this story works as wish-fulfillment for people who dream of being the center of the universe, but it just reminded me that this was some writer's fantasy, which kept pulling me out of the story. 

It's a shame, too, because there's an interesting idea at the core of this story -- painted portraits as portals to parallel worlds-- but sadly Pokwatka doesn't do anything interesting with this concept. It ends up being a lame excuse to make clones, as Pepper soon finds herself overrun with multiple versions of her mother. This could have been an interesting analysis of motherhood -- how does each version respond to Pepper, and what does that say about her relationship with the mother from her own universe? Instead of exploring the concept with any depth, the book focuses on the 'wacky hijinks' of a bunch of clones who need to do a Serious Job™ yet can't stop fighting like the Three Stooges.

TL;DR: All in all, 2/5 stars. A great concept wasted through a horribly contrived execution.