The Memory Police

There's a lot to say about this book. I went from enjoying it to not enjoying before landing on very much liking it.

Throughout reading this, I couldn't separate it from the atmosphere of the Pedro Costa film, Casa de Lava, which was also about an isolated island, death and isolation. While they were both very different, they align mood-wise quite well.

I noticed a lot of western talk about the book centered on it being “Orwellian,” a term I've grown to loathe in its overuse. I'm not sure this book was about big, sweeping statements or warnings about society as much as it was about the concept and process of creating art and coping with trauma.

Focusing on the “memory police” themselves doesn't quite connect the book's main narrative with the sub-narrative of the novel the main character was writing.

The novel was a woman who was defined by her typing and relationship with her abusive, controlling typing teacher until she lost herself completely. The main narrative was a woman living on a dystopian island who's entire existence was tethered to two men; the first an old man that was a family friend and a father figure, the second her editor, who ran away from his family to live in her basement to avoid this “memory police.” The relationship is different but... Sort of isn't, too. She's disassociating from the world around her but he's the “captive” of her fading memories who seems to legitimately care for her and wants her to be what she was before, which she cannot do. He's living in a small, hidden room in her home, while the character in her book was living in a hidden room above a church without her voice.

The main character's last remaining thing is her voice after the old man is gone.

These relationships with men seem to be the binding threads to me, moreso than jackboots taking things away. R won't let her move on, the typing instructor only wanted to violate her until he found a new toy. It's easy to read the typing teacher as a part of the publishing industry, elevating a “fresh, young female voice,” controlling it until there's nothing left, then replacing her voice with another to repeat the cycle.

The role of the protag's mother can't be discounted, either. R wishes her to explore that relationship and the loss of her mother, who left behind memories meant just for her, but had to be interpreted by R. After they find the last of her mother's gifts and she gives the lemon candies to the old man, it sort of seals off a part of her history.

Yeah, like I said, lots to think about.