I’m really enjoying dystopian novels lately- maybe a bit of life imitating art? This didn’t disappoint- a frightening world where the Memory Police can remove memories at their whim. Although we never learn the characters names I still felt empathy towards what they were going through. I enjoyed this thoroughly

I hadn’t read anything by Ogawa in 10 years or so, and I admit I don’t really remember anymore all the details, but I do remember I tended to like this author. Hence my seizing the opportunity to get and read this one.

It is a strange story in a way, in that, all in all, the characters are not so memorable themselves (their names are never revealed), and yet still leave an impression due to what they are going through. As inhabitants of an island where certain things disappear from memory at random, they are constantly faced with not knowing what the next thing to go will be, with the Memory Police coming to enforce this by making sure people get rid of all traces of the now-forgotten things (including also getting rid of those who are able to remember), and where one question lingers at the back of many minds: will the people themselves be forgotten someday?

The novel follows a woman who writes novels for a living, and whose mother was one of the islanders who retained their memories. While the narrator is affected by the disappearances, and does her best to lie low and be an abiding citizen, she also does uphold a tiny streak of rebellion, up to the day she decides, with the help of an old friend of the family, to hide someone who remembers in a storage space between two floors. As the disappearances increase, and the Memory Police searches more and more homes and arrests more and more people, not only does she have to face the fear of being discovered, but also her fears of what will happen in the end.

This said, the story is less about the dystopian state of the island (the size of the island itself is never specified: it feels like a small island with just one town, and at the same time it must be bigger than that), or even about providing an explanation as to the collective, gradual amnesia taking hold, and more about memories, about how various things are important for us, about exploring what forgetting could mean In time, the inhabitants lose the names of what vanished, and even when presented with a surviving item that escaped the police, said item doesn’t elicit anything in them. And there lies another question: are memories precious in themselves, or only for as long as they feel precious to us? The narrator constantly struggles with this, as another character does their best to help her recover her memories of disappeared things and she’s never sure this can even happen.

Woven into the narrative is also the story the narrator (an author) is working on, that of a typist who’s lost her voice and communicates with her lover by writing on her typing machine. At first, I wondered how this was supposed to tie with the main story, and was a little afraid it was here for flavouring more than anything else—but it does tie with it at some point, and in a very relevant way.

Conclusion: 3.5 to 4 stars. In terms of narrative and of memorable characters, this is not the most striking book ever, but it has the sort of gripping, haunting quality that won’t let go.

'The Memory Police' is a highly affecting novel following a novelist on an unnamed island in the thrawl of a totalitarian regime that continually 'disappears' everyday objects in order to pacify the people. Birds, photographs, maps, flowers, all begin to vanish from the world as the novelist hatches a plot to protect her editor, one who cannot forget the losses, from the disappearances. This is a powerfully poetic and forceful novel that moves slowly, giving the world time to expand (as within the novel it shrinks) and is a joy to read.

Breathtaking, this astounding novel presents a speculative world where objects and experiences are disappeared from memory, leaving behind existential cavities in the recollections and perceptions of the characters. The prose is tentative, elegiac and beautifully evocative of the loss, regret and formless nostalgia this engenders. This is masterfully counter- balanced by a meta-textual interlacing of the protagonist’s own novel which mirrors the motifs of control, identity and autonomy. I am going to tell everyone to read this canonical text. My students will certainly be studying it alongside Ishiguro, Angela Carter, Orwell and Atwood.

This book was very poetic while having a dystopian aspect. The topics of memories shaping our lives is really interesting and the author used it in a memorable way.

A quiet story that centres around the characters of a person as a collection of memories and unconditional friendship in a totalitarian surveillance state. We follow the lives of three friends on an isolated island where more and more objects all of a sudden disappear and with them every memory of their previous existence. An evil memory police hunt people who still remember and enforces the destruction of all disappeared pieces. While this could be the setting for an action-packed novel, it focuses with great care on the life of the individuals and their day-to-day struggles. This book gave me massive DDR (former East Germany) vibes, it was as haunting as everything I read about this former surveillance state, capturing the anxiety of its citizens and the reckless police brutality convincingly good. I raced through this novel and certainly recommend it to everyone who is intrigued by its synopsis.

I fully understand this was about the trauma of loss of memory but I just couldn't engage with the story-line. I had expected it to be thought-provoking and possibly disturbing, and sometimes it did just make me wonder if this was how it might feel to suffer from amnesia or alzheimers but I could never shed the feeling that it was just too silly and unbelievable. Sorry, but I really didn't enjoy this.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

Imagine waking up one morning to find that you have forgotten what a bird is. Any attachment, any knowledge you ever had about birds is gone, as are most of the birds themselves. Even if you see a bird, you don't have any idea what it is. It's gone from your mind forever. Pretty scary idea, right?

Now imagine your country is run by an authoritarian regime who can make things 'disappear' like this at will.

That's the conceit of The Memory Police, the newly translated novel from Yoko Ogawa, a Japanese author who has won every major literary prize in Japan. The book was originally published 25 years ago, but it's only now making the jump to English.

When the novel opens, birds, ferries, hates, ribbons, perfume and emeralds have already been disappeared, among a host of other things, but the population of the unnamed island where the book is set have tried to plow on as normal. Early in the book both roses and fruit are disappeared, and seeing the way that people 'mourn' these items, and how they are erased from existence as much as possible (e.g. all fruit falls from trees to rot on the ground) is fascinating.

But while the disappearances are mourned by most, there are people who simply don't forget. They go on remembering and treasuring these objects, living in fear that the Memory Police will discover their secret and whisk them away.

The protagonist, an unnamed female novelist, knows the pain of this all too well. Though she is affected by the disappearances, her Mother is one of those who is resistant, and she hoarded disappeared items in a dresser in the family basement until The Memory Police came and dragged her away, declaring her dead just a few days later.

Now it's just the protagonist and the 'old man', a family friend who used to operate the ferry before it was disappeared. The only other person of significance in her life (and the character who comes closest to receiving a name) is her editor R, and when R reveals he remembers the disappeared items, a plot if hatched to hide him from the Memory Police in her home.

This sets up a fascinating exploration of identity, memory, totalitarianism, resistance and oppression, that manages to feel both distinctly Japanese in setting and style, yet completely applicable to broader society.

The plot whistles along at a solid pace, balancing ruminating on loss with continued plot developments very well. The cast of characters, though small, is very interesting, with the 'old man' a particular favourite of mine. Some of R and the protagonist's choices are more questionable, but not too distracting on the whole. All this combines to mean that by the final quarter, when the plot takes some interesting twists that I wouldn't have expected, there's a solid emotional punch to the conclusion.

The decision to include the fragment of the protagonist's own novel in the book was also a decision that pays off in spades. Not only is the 'novel within a novel' a gripping story in it's own right, but it intersects with the plight and storyline of its writer in both expected and more subtle ways that give a wonderful sense of depth to the writing.

Despite being written more than 25 years ago, the book still feels incredibly fresh and relevant to today's society. The commentary on totalitarianism feels like it would fit in a modern-set dystopia, the portrayal of resistance in the face of oppression could be applied to so many societies and communities in the modern world and how we're so attention starved that we forget to appreciate the small things - how something as simple as a bird flying across the sky can be both beautiful and fleeting.

There's certainly much for discussion, with book clubs across the country guaranteed to debate this for years to come, though I feel like there aren't quite enough answers to me. A lot is left unanswered - we're left to imagine who The Memory Police are, how the disappearances work, how they started, what the end goal is - and perhaps I'd have enjoyed a few more resolutions that the reader is given, but it does mean that there's a lot of scope to transpose the novel on to the real world.

Other than some slightly questionable character decisions and the lack of answers, the only other word of caution I'd offer is that this perhaps isn't aimed at a traditional dystopia audience. Most dystopia come to some sort of resolution or conflict in a way that The Memory Police doesn't - it's definitely on the more literary end of the dystopia genre and I worry this might be off putting to some.

That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and the messages it puts across about the modern world (despite being written so long ago) and I will definitely seek out more of the author's work in the near future.

I received a NetGalley review copy in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. Many thanks to Vintage for approving my request.

There have always been disappearances on the island, objects come and go, people disappear, concepts vanish in a single night. But when this process starts to speed up – what else do the Memory Police want forgotten?

The Memory Police was originally written in Japanese in 1994 and was translated for this copy by Stephen Snyder. The translation is lovingly done, there is a lot of very quotable extracts from this book and the writing flows very well and doesn’t really feel like it has been translated. The story itself is beautiful and haunting. It reminded me a lot of books such as 1984, Equilibrium and Ella Minnow Pea. Although written a while ago the themes feel very prevalent within today’s society.

I enjoyed the short story of the typist which is told throughout the book and mirrors the main plot well. The whole book is chilling and lovely to read and asks some really important questions about how much the government has control of it’s citizens and how far this can be pushed. Although it starts out quite plausible, with self- fulfilling prophecies of things that ‘disappear’ – such as objects that are willingly burnt by the citizens, things amp up to its conclusion with more abstract things disappearing or being forgotten. The tension is kept up throughout and the book held my interest and stayed with me long after I put it down.

Overall The Memory Police is a beautifully haunting tale with a powerful message – highly recommended! Thank you to NetGalley & Random House UK – Vintage Publishing and Harvill Secker for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Memory Police is a juggling act which sets readers up with a spectacle of a concept: something strange and unsettling, something obviously dystopian and thematically intriguing, before drawing out its performance a little but all the while encouraging you to fall for its protagonists in a true and meaningful way. At last, it enters deeply unsettling territory that will have you frantically turning pages to see how it could possibly end. There are certainly issues with tone and pacing, and yet you could not say for a moment that The Memory Police ever allowed you to relax; the fear of the unknown and the quiet anxiety the book infects you with never go away. And this book has a refreshing take on the dystopian formula, with an original concept and a message vague enough to encourage debate, and yet strong enough to have your brain ticking over for days after you put it down, until the urge to pick it up again searching for answers you might have missed becomes too much to bear.

It’s safe to say Yoko Ogawa has done it again: she has shown why she’s one of the best writers Japan has; how she takes a genre or an idea into her hands and moulds it into something human, something frightening, something raw, and something wholly new.

Full review here:
https://booksandbao.com/2019/08/12/review-the-memory-police-by-yoko-ogawa/

Characterised as a science-fiction novel reminiscent of Orwell’s classic Nineteen Eighty Four, but with a dreamlike Kafka-esque quality of the fantastic, Yoko Ogawa’s newest English-translated novel, The Memory Police, embodies the sheer horror of loss and the inevitability of preventing it.

As usual, Ogawa’s prose is stark and clear and creates an eerie atmosphere befitting of her novel’s theme. Although there is a very vivid plot throughout the novel, it does feel at times like the story does not move forward at all, but it instead focuses on the feelings and musings of the characters. The totalitarian-like regime that is described is terrifying, presenting a society on the verge of collapse and almost famished. Although the disappearances are never really explained, leaving this fantastic element aloft, they do seem to rather represent a disappearance of culture, of the self, of one’s identity.

Ogawa’s apocalyptic magical realism is exactly my cup of tea, and so I devoured this book is just a few days. I loved the tranquil and stark writing style, I loved the world and character building, (I disaggreed with some relationships between characters, but that’s a personal issue) but at some points, the story felt a little lacking. Like it had become absorbed in its own created universe a little too much, or like it was itself a fragment of a memory unable to be forgotten.

The taste the ending leaves is bittersweet, just like the theme it explores. Memories are fickle yet precious, they are proof that some things and experiences have truly existed, they are what makes us, us. Without our memories, can we still remain the same people, or are we bound to disappear and dissolve into nothingness like our very own memories?

The Memory Police is a wonderful and terrifying book that certainly provides its readers with plenty of food for thought. I wholeheartedly recommend it to lovers of the fantastic and literary fiction alike, as I’m sure both groups will find something to relish in between its pages.

On a remote island, things start disappearing. It normally happens at night - you wake up and can feel that something has disappeared overnight. Sometimes it's little things you barely notice, sometimes it's whole species. On the island, an unnamed woman is trying to continue her life as a novelist, when she finds out her editor can remember everything that's disappeared and is in danger from the Memory Police. She steps in to hide him, risking her own life, as she tries to make sense of the disappearances around her.

The Memory Police is a hauntingly chilling and creepily quiet novel, where all the things that alarm you are so normalised, so accepted. On top of that, you get the sense that when the disappearances started on this island, the changes in society that lead to the Memory Police being in charge and being able to act the way they did were so gradual that the inhabitants of the island would never see it coming. 

The way Ogawa describes the disappearances is terrifyingly brilliant. How you can go from knowing what a bird is to not being able to even think of the word, to picture the animal. And it begs so many follow on questions: what is happening off the island? Are disappearances happening there too? Surely birds can't just disappear from one island? What about migration? They'd fly over at some point if they existed elsewhere?

But the events of this novel are so localised to this island that it's almost as if nowhere else exists, nowhere else is of importance. You don't care about anywhere else. You care about this woman, the old man, and R.

The names of these characters are off too. R, just a letter? What does it stand for? Is that his full name? Why call him R and yet just call the old man 'the old man'? There is one point where the woman gives the Memory Police his name, so he does have one. But she just says 'I gave them his name.' So why know it and call him 'the old man'? Why does no one call her by a name? It's a weird thread of the book that is never addressed but adds to the atmosphere of mystery and intrigue, of things losing their names and identities.

As the main character is a novelist, we get snippets of her current manuscript interspersed throughout, and it's beautifully representative of how the author (the young woman, not Ogawa) is transferring her feelings about the disappearances into her novel. It's like an extra story within a story. 

This is 100% one of those that stays with you, and makes you ponder about all our memories and the things we forget, but also about the presence of the Memory Police in this book. Dystopian to the core, it's one thing to take objects away from people, but to make them forget all their memories too? It's really very heartbreaking to read.

This was originally published in 1994,.............I was so looking forward to read The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa, and Stephen Snyder the Translator.
However, it did not grab me like other books I have read recently. It took me several days and attempts to read it. I've never read a book that has been so hard to write a review for and how I felt. This book is set in a remote island where things around everyone is disappearing. Items that you see everyday, to living animals, birds, to flowers, roses and plants then to sentinel objects to you, hats, perfume, calendars, etc these are manifested in a physical purge of the objects as well as a psychological absence in the island’s residents’ memories. They have just disappeared and not to be seen or talked about again. Within, time these items never existed! People woke up and they were never there.
However, some people did remember these items and have the ability to remember them. They had to hide the items from others and only get the items out in secret. No one must know they have them! If caught they would be Punished by the Memory Police!

This book was a strange one........However, you can relate to this in life now a days..........things are slowly disappearing from around us.

Would I recommend it.......Hmmmmmmm Maybe! It was one of the weirdest and hardest books I have read in a long time. But, glad I did.

Big Thank you to Random House U.K. Vintage Publishing for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘The Memory Police’ by Yoko Ogawa, in exchange for an honest review. It has been translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder.

Dystopian novel, set on a remote island, about the value of memory. The poetic and atmospheric writing is enchanting.

My thanks to Random House U.K. Vintage Publishing for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘The Memory Police’ by Yoko Ogawa, in exchange for an honest review. It has been translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder.

This is a strange, rather whimsical, dystopian tale that becomes increasingly surreal as it progresses.

It is set on an unnamed island where various things are disappeared from society. As one character explains these were “Transparent things, fragrant things … fluttery ones, bright ones … wonderful things you can’t possibly imagine.” When this happens things don’t cease to exist but they lose all meaning. The island populace instinctively knows to immediately discard any remnants in their possession and their memories quickly fade until the item is completely removed from the collective memory.

It’s a strange premise though after a few examples such as hats, perfume, birds and roses we understand how this process happens even if not why. Birds still physically exist though are no longer recognised when seen and all references to them are destroyed. Earlier, we learn that when perfume disappeared the island inhabitants poured away all their perfume. It seems almost as though they are automatons without free will.

A few people are able to retain their memories but they are taken away by the dreaded Memory Police. There is also a resistance that hides people from the Memory Police though at great risk to themselves.

The novel is narrated by an unnamed young woman who makes her living as a novelist. Her mother was one of those rare individuals who retained memory and tried to reawaken these in her daughter. We learn that she died while in the custody of the Memory Police. When our narrator learns that her editor, R, has memories of the disappeared items and is in danger of discovery as he is finding it increasingly difficult to conceal his memories, she undertakes to hide him.

Throughout the narrative there are excerpts from her latest novel about a young woman who is imprisoned by her typing teacher after he renders her mute. This story within a story is a dark fairytale reminiscent of John Fowles’ ‘The Collector’. Overall this novel with its totalitarian regime and compliant population joins the lineage of ‘1984’ and ‘Fahrenheit 451’.

‘The Memory Police’ is also a testimony to the richness of world literature and has a timeless, universal feel to it. I was surprised to find that it had been originally published in 1994 in Japan and only just been published in English for the first time.

I read that Ogawa had been profoundly moved by ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ when she was a teenager and eventually transmuted her imagining of what Anne had experienced into ‘The Memory Police’. Certainly the descriptions of the constraints of living in cramped hiding places does convey a powerful sense of claustrophobia.

The novel has left me in a deeply contemplative and slightly melancholic mood. While certainly dystopian it is also an existential meditation on the nature of memory and the self. An allegory that has deep relevance in today’s world where surveillance and authoritarian regimes are on the rise.

The cover art is very striking and even more so after I had finishing reading.

Highly recommended.

Love love LOVED this. Slightly terrified by it given current events around the world but nevertheless, hugely enjoyable. It reminded me in its quietness of Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow, and the spare language of Lullaby by Leila Slimani (which I didn't love really but liked the writing style). Can't wait to read more from Yoko Ogawa!

This is a dystopian novel set in an unnamed island where nearly every day certain things, objects or living beings disappear totally, leaving the inhabitants with absolutely no memory of them. The author uses simple, plain prose with some poetic -even lyrical- moments in order to narrate an Orwellian story where an oppressing institution, the titular Memory Police, makes sure that there is nothing left for the people to remember the "disappeared" entities. I mostly enjoyed the book, which was first published in 1994 and now translated in English for the first time, but even though it is a relatively short-length novel, I couldn't help feeling a bit bored in some parts that seemed to be a bit dull. There are some pretty interesting insights on the subjects of the nature of human memory and its relation with reality and the importance of the recollective experience in the structure of the individual's identity and sense of self. Furthermore, Yoko Ogawa outlines with great skillfulness the oppressive nature of a dictatorship giving the book a more political dimension. I would honestly give "The Memory Police" 4 stars out of five if the plot was stronger and more engaging, though I understand that the author's priority is not an intricate plot, but raising crucial questions regarding existential human problems. I believe that this is a book that will appeal more to the fans of the literary fiction genre rather than those of crime/mystery fiction.

Hat, ribbon, bird, rose. To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed.

When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately wants to save him. For some reason, he doesn’t forget, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide his memories. Who knows what will vanish next?

The Memory Police is a beautiful, haunting and provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, from one of Japan’s greatest writers.

This is a very lyrical and whimsical book and I really enjoyed reading it. This book is beautifully written and so thought provoking.
This book was a refreshing.
I give this book 4 stars and highly recommend.

The Memory Police is a poetic, hypnotic, gentle novel that begins as a surveillance-state dystopia, and ends as something more existential, a surreal meditation on our sense of self.

First published in Japan 25 years ago and newly available in English translation, the novel has a timeless feel. The inhabitants of an unnamed island, living under an oppressive regime, experience a form of collective, gradual, amnesia. Upon waking, a seemingly random item - roses, birds, boats - will begin to fade from their minds. They must ensure the item's complete erasure by purging all evidence of its existence from the world. The Memory Police are there to crush any feeble resistance, but most people drift along with passive complaisance. What's the point in clinging to something you can't remember?

A small number of people are immune to the phenomenon. They, who alone are cursed with complete memories of all that has been lost, pose a threat to the regime and must conceal their outsider status at all costs.

The plot, such as it is, concerns a woman's efforts to hide one of these individuals in a purpose-built annex under her floorboards, in a manner reminiscent of The Diary of Anne Frank. Meanwhile the 'forgettings' accelerate, becoming more and more extreme.

This is a quiet, serene, personal sort of apocalypse, where attempts at resistance are small, and culminating in the very destruction of the self. I also recently read Revenge by the same author, and a quote from that book applies perfectly to this one:

"The prose was unremarkable, as were the plot and characters, but there was an icy current running under her words, and I found myself wanting to plunge into it again and again."

A powerful, resonant allegory and that icy current make this a memorable read. 4 stars.

This is not an easy book or a summer read. It's weird, poetic and often dreamy.
We don't know a lot about the setting, we just know things happen and you cannot help feeling for the characters.
i loved the style of writing as much as I loved the character development. I read it slowly because it's full of food for thought and I wanted to reflect on what I was reading.
It's being an engaging reading experience, recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.