A haunting Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance, from the acclaimed author of The Housekeeper and the Professor.
On an unnamed island, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses. . . . Most of the inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few able 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 writer discovers that her editor is in danger, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards, and together they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past. Powerful and provocative, The Memory Police is a stunning novel about the trauma of loss.
228 pages
Published July 28, 2020
Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police is, on its surface, a story about a novelist living on an island where people’s memories, and thus their connection to and understand of things, disappears. When something from the island disappears – for instance, shoes – people burn or throw away the useless vestiges of items that no longer mean anything. What good is having a shoe around when you don’t know what to do with it, when you can’t remember doing anything with it at all?
This is all facilitated by the Memory Police, who ensure that people properly dispose of their unneeded disappeared-memory items, while also seeking out those few in society who, for whatever reason, are still able to remember.
For most of the book, this character, known only as R, hides out in a small room inside the protagonist’s house, keeping himself safe from the Memory Police, at great risk to the protagonist herself. Nobody knows what will happen if the Memory Police catch them, only that they’ll be taken away and never return. Lack of knowing keeps them both paralysed, stuck in place due to their fear.
It’s not hard to see how this setup makes for some brilliant commentary on society, on language and memory, and on oppressive regimes. The unnamed protagonist (almost nobody has a name in The Memory Police) takes it upon herself to hide a close acquaintance after he reveals that he’s on of those few who can still remember. His ability to retain his memories makes an heartbreaking but fascination juxtaposition, with him trying his best to get the protagonist to remember again, to reform her heart and soul with memories of beloved things from the past, and the disappointment the protagonist feels when she can’t, when at most she gets fleeting feelings that dissipate almost as quickly as they came.
And I do meant heartbreaking. At the beginning of the story, things feel interesting, and it’s easy to get invested in the life of the novelist and those around her. But the more I read, the more it became clear that there was no happy ending here, no way it could all be turned around and everyone could get their memories back and live happily ever after. I read the final page, closed the book, and felt hollow inside.
On one hand, this makes for a delightfully evocative story that draws a reader in and uses that investment to dig the knife in a little deeper. You feel the sorrow of a loss that even the protagonist doesn’t fully understand. It must be something akin to what R felt, seeing the protagonist lose so much of herself to the disappearances, while he remembered and knew exactly what was lost, could see the ripple effects of that loss.
There’s never an explanation for any of this. What causes people to lose their memories like that? Why are animals also affected, like the day birds disappeared? Why did fruit fall from the trees and rot upon the ground the day that fruit itself became a vanished memory? Why do people like R seem incapable of forgetting? If this were a YA dystopian novel, for instance, there would have been sci-fi explanations, a glorious rebellion where people overthrow the Memory Police and reclaim their memories and lives and thus their freedom. But there’s none of that here, making The Memory Police feel like an almost dream-like fairy tale. The point isn’t to explain. The point is to experience.
This all came together to create a powerful allegory for how oppressive regimes destroy themselves from within. Even the Memory Police themselves were subject to the disappearances. They weren’t immune to having novels vanish, to losing the concept of candy, and nor were they immune to losing the use of their bodies, eventually becoming faint wisps of voice like everyone else, to drift away on the breeze and allow all those who escaped, all those who hid, to come out of their hiding places and resume living in the outside world.
But here’s the rub. The regime fell. But the survivors were few in number, and emerged into a world that had been devasted by the actions of the Memory Police and their actions. Could fruit ever grow again? Would birds return, if people remembered them and could recognize them? Or would they have to find a way to leave the island and try to live elsewhere, shouldering their trauma of events that those on the outside couldn’t possible understand?
The effects of oppression don’t just vanish the moment the regime falls. Survivors are still affected by their past. They don’t just forget.
I can’t say for certain that was what the author intended with The Memory Police, but that was how it read to me. Spare on answers, but heavy with meaning, the protagonist’s story resonates with too many events from real-world history, enough to create an unsettling and uncomfortable atmosphere throughout while also making the characters and events compelling enough to keep me reading despite my discomfort. Sometimes books aren’t meant to be comfortable relaxing reads before bed. Sometimes they invite you to think, to reflect, and to confront ideas that you’d normally rather not. So I can’t say I enjoyed it, per se. But I did think it was an amazing piece of speculative literature, and one that was well worth reading.
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