The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

 

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, translated from Japanese by Stephen Snyder, is a lyrical, dreamy novel that is inexplicably hard to describe. Our unnamed protagonist lives on an unnamed island writing novels with unnamed characters. But this island is strange because things get "disappeared" and then most people on the island slowly lose memories of those things. At first, it's just things like perfume and music boxes, but then the roses are disappeared. Then the ferry is disappeared and there's no way off the island. Then the books are disappeared.  What is going to happen to our heroine?

It's a fascinating look at the power of the state to suppress thought. If you take away tangible things and you can't use words and phrases, it has the power to change your very thought. We see this in the use of slurs today - if we don't use words that denigrate entire groups of individuals, those words will slowly go away and then the stereotypes of those ideas will also erode in use. And, generally speaking, that's a good thing. But we also see it the way that we talk about other things, particularly in the political arena.  There seems to be a discourse that it's left/right, liberal/conservative, good/bad, without really examining the nuances and in betweens. It's what causes misunderstandings about the differences between communism, socialism, democratic socialism, and fascism.  Maybe it's because I'm married to a political theorist, but the discourse is so filled with anger and hate and absolute wrongness that it makes me wonder what has happened to civic-minded disagreements.

Back to the book, though. There's this melancholy feeling suffusing it that fairly seeps off the page. It's beautiful and feels like poetry, but the overall impression is suffocation by prose. By the time you get to the last page, you know what the ending is going to be because there's no other possible ending, but that's not bad, it's just...sad.

Notable lines:

" 'If you read a novel to the end, then it's over. I would never want to do something as wasteful as that. I'd much rather keep it here with me, safe and sound, forever.' " (page 17)

There is something about the anticipation of reading a good novel. There's also something delicious about having finished a novel and knowing its secrets.

"To tell the truth, the sound of the bell had terrified me ever since I was a little girl. It reminded me of the groans of a dying man." (page 126)

The church by my house rings bells every fifteen minutes, 24/7. There's also the addition of hymns for services on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. And don't get me started on the extra bells during services like weddings and funerals. Suffice to say, I would like to go to the bell tower and go all Luke and Lorelai on those things.