The Memory Police in Get Lit - Bettendorf Public Library

Jan 09, 2021 Emily rated it really liked it

Shelves: favorites, audiobooks, fiction, can-t-stop-thinking-about, soms

This book messed with my mind. And I loved every minute of it. Reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984, our protagonist lives on an isolated and secluded island where things are disappeared and everyone is expected to give up whatever they may have of the disappeared item or face basically being disappeared themselves by the Memory Police. They round up those who can't forget, those whose memory stays intact, those who know what they have truly lost.

I was not prepared for this book. I thought I was. ...more

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Oct 04, 2021 Bettendorf Library rated it really liked it

Shelves: adult-fiction, diverse-representation, david

Our November selection for Get Lit was The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa. Ogawa is well-known in Japan and the author of many novels. However, this is only her fifth book that has been translated into English. The Memory Police was a National Book Award Finalist and short-listed for the International Booker Prize.
Set on a small nameless island where things are routinely disappeared and forgotten by the island's residents. The forgetting is enforced by the Memory Police, they conduct raids to find Our November selection for Get Lit was The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa. Ogawa is well-known in Japan and the author of many novels. However, this is only her fifth book that has been translated into English. The Memory Police was a National Book Award Finalist and short-listed for the International Booker Prize.
Set on a small nameless island where things are routinely disappeared and forgotten by the island's residents. The forgetting is enforced by the Memory Police, they conduct raids to find disappeared items hidden away and to seize persons whose memories remain intact. The disappearances start small, ribbons, bells, specific foods. However, the disappearances begin to accelerate and become more disruptive as birds, calendars, and items ever more central to the characters' identities begin to disappear.
The book is short on detail when it comes to the mechanics of the disappearances, why items are disappeared, how the characters forget, and even about the origin and motives of the Memory Police. What we are left with is the oppressive feeling of loss and a sense of inevitability.
This book differed from other dystopias that I have read. Though there are intimations of individuals who do not lose their memories, hidden disappeared items, and an underground network to keep them both secreted from the Memory Police, readers will find no heroic figures like Offred from the Handmaid's Tale or Guy Montag from Fahrenheit 451 determined to be even just a little bit of sand in the gears of a overbearing and oppressive system.
In preparation for our book discussion, I read a number of reviews. Many of the reviewers read Ogawa's novel as being allegorical. But what the novel was an allegory for varied by review; is this a book about the rise of surveillance and authoritarianism, is it about ecological losses, the mass disappearance of species and habitats as our climate changes? Perhaps it is a critique of cultural forgetting and what happens when we refuse to discuss or examine the difficult parts of our history, or maybe the metaphor is more personal, and about the losses that we suffer as we age. One reviewer, in the online magazine Slate, noted how strange it was to be reading this book at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, as things we once took for granted, disappeared rapidly from our lives. Ogawa never tells the reader what to think or what conclusions to draw. And I personally, found all of these readings to be plausible, which for me, gave the book deep, rich, and lasting meaning.
I recommend The Memory Police if you would like a strange novel that will sit with you long after you've finished.

-David ...more

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Nov 10, 2020 David rated it really liked it

Our November selection for Get Lit was The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa. Ogawa is well-known in Japan and the author of many novels. However, this is only her fifth book that has been translated into English. The Memory Police was a National Book Award Finalist and short-listed for the International Booker Prize.

Set on a small nameless island where things are routinely disappeared and forgotten by the island's residents. The forgetting is enforced by the Memory Police, they conduct raids to find Our November selection for Get Lit was The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa. Ogawa is well-known in Japan and the author of many novels. However, this is only her fifth book that has been translated into English. The Memory Police was a National Book Award Finalist and short-listed for the International Booker Prize.

Set on a small nameless island where things are routinely disappeared and forgotten by the island's residents. The forgetting is enforced by the Memory Police, they conduct raids to find disappeared items hidden away and to seize persons whose memories remain intact. The disappearances start small, ribbons, bells, specific foods. However, the disappearances begin to accelerate and become more disruptive as birds, calendars, and items ever more central to the characters' identities begin to disappear.

The book is short on detail when it comes to the mechanics of the disappearances, why items are disappeared, how the characters forget, and even about the origin and motives of the Memory Police. What we are left with is the oppressive feeling of loss and a sense of inevitability.

This book differed from other dystopias that I have read. Though there are intimations of individuals who do not lose their memories, hidden disappeared items, and an underground network to keep them both secreted from the Memory Police, readers will find no heroic figures like Offred from the Handmaid's Tale or Guy Montag from Fahrenheit 451 determined to be even just a little bit of sand in the gears of a overbearing and oppressive system.

In preparation for our book discussion, I read a number of reviews. Many of the reviewers read Ogawa's novel as being allegorical. But what the novel was an allegory for varied by review; is this a book about the rise of surveillance and authoritarianism, is it about ecological losses, the mass disappearance of species and habitats as our climate changes? Perhaps it is a critique of cultural forgetting and what happens when we refuse to discuss or examine the difficult parts of our history, or maybe the metaphor is more personal, and about the losses that we suffer as we age. One reviewer, in the online magazine Slate, noted how strange it was to be reading this book at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, as things we once took for granted, disappeared rapidly from our lives. Ogawa never tells the reader what to think or what conclusions to draw. And I personally, found all of these readings to be plausible, which for me, gave the book deep, rich, and lasting meaning.

I recommend The Memory Police if you would like a strange novel that will sit with you long after you've finished. ...more

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Nov 12, 2020 Erin rated it liked it

Shelves: book-club, my-kindle

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May 20, 2019 Hayleigh marked it as to-read

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Mar 11, 2024 Hayleigh marked it as to-read · review of another edition

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