Skip to main content

Tell Me an Ending (SF) - Jo Harkin ****

The idea of wiping an event from someone's memory is a long-standing science fiction trope. It has cropped up regularly in both written SF and movies from Men in Black to Total Recall. Usually, it is approached from the viewpoint of the person whose memory has been altered as they slowly uncover the surprising realities of their past - but Jo Harkin has managed to revitalise the concept with a totally different approach - and the result is impressive.

More often that not, the memory wiping in fiction has been imposed and is a secret procedure. Here, and most like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which is referenced in this novel), it's all open and above board (or so it seems). But there are two particularly clever aspects to Harkin's take on the subject that raise it above an Eternal Sunshine clone. Firstly, a major focus is the company Nepenthe that undertakes the procedure - the uncomfortable juxtaposition of a modern corporate's attempted positioning as a caring organisation with human interactions is very well handled. 

Secondly, there are two types of procedure. Some customers know that they have had a memory removed. Others, though - brought in at night - no longer know that they have had the procedure. This opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities when it's discovered that the procedure can be reversed - and Nepenthe are legally forced to contact clients who don't know they've had a memory erased to ask if they want it restored. This is a brilliant twist that really drives the narrative.

There were issues. The book is structured as five strands that eventually intertwine. Each strand has a separate chapter with its own set of characters. This meant that after reading the opening chapter focussed on what is arguably the most important character, Noor, a psychologist at Nepenthe, we then have to read 85 pages before we return to Noor - by then, to be honest, I'd forgotten half of what happened in that first strand. Even at the end of the book I was still getting the different strands confused. Now, this might have been a clever meta-comment on the nature and fragility of memory - which is obviously a subject at the heart of the book - but it did make reading it unnecessarily hard work.

Apart from that, I did think that the old epithet of 'show don't tell' could have been followed better - there was a lot of internal monologue. And I disliked the affectation of formatting dialogue from the past without any speech marks, which just made it difficult to read.

However, these are relatively minor things. Harkin gives us a thought-provoking exploration of the grey area of whether we should undertake a procedure that a person thinks is good for them, but may not actually be (a consideration that could be applied to a number of existing socially-driven medical procedures), as well as helping us think about the nature of memory and how much it influences who we are as individuals. The final two sections are gripping as everything starts to come together and things that have been happening that were mysterious are finally explained. Despite my dislike of the structure, this is one of the best novels I've read this year.

Hardback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Antigravity Enigma - Andrew May ****

Antigravity - the ability to overcome the pull of gravity - has been a fantasy for thousands of years and subject to more scientific (if impractical) fictional representation since H. G. Wells came up with cavorite in The First Men in the Moon . But is it plausible scientifically?  Andrew May does a good job of pulling together three ways of looking at our love affair with antigravity (and the related concept of cancelling inertia) - in science fiction, in physics and in pseudoscience and crankery. As May points out, science fiction is an important starting point as the concept was deployed there well before we had a good enough understanding of gravity to make any sensible scientific stabs at the idea (even though, for instance, Michael Faraday did unsuccessfully experiment with a possible interaction between gravity and electromagnetism). We then get onto the science itself, noting the potential impact on any ideas of antigravity that come from the move from a Newtonian view of a...
Post a Comment
Read more

The World as We Know It - Peter Dear ***

History professor Peter Dear gives us a detailed and reasoned coverage of the development of science as a concept from its origins as natural philosophy, covering the years from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. inclusive If that sounds a little dry, frankly, it is. But if you don't mind a very academic approach, it is certainly interesting. Obviously a major theme running through is the move from largely gentleman natural philosophers (with both implications of that word 'gentleman') to professional academic scientists. What started with clubs for relatively well off men with an interest, when universities did not stray far beyond what was included in mathematics (astronomy, for instance), would become a very different beast. The main scientific subjects that Dear covers are physics and biology - we get, for instance, a lot on the gradual move away from a purely mechanical views of physics - the reason Newton's 'action at a distance' gravity caused such ...
Post a Comment
Read more

It's On You - Nick Chater and George Loewenstein *****

Going on the cover you might think this was a political polemic - and admittedly there's an element of that - but the reason it's so good is quite different. It shows how behavioural economics and social psychology have led us astray by putting the focus way too much on individuals. A particular target is the concept of nudges which (as described in Brainjacking ) have been hugely over-rated. But overall the key problem ties to another psychological concept: framing. Huge kudos to both Nick Chater and George Loewenstein - a behavioural scientist and an economics and psychology professor - for having the guts to take on the flaws in their own earlier work and that of colleagues, because they make clear just how limited and potentially dangerous is the belief that individuals changing their behaviour can solve large-scale problems. The main thesis of the book is that there are two ways to approach the major problems we face - an 'i-frame' where we focus on the individual ...
Post a Comment
Read more