3.5 stars, rounded up.
Even several days after finishing this book I'm still not quite sure how I feel about it. It's set on a remote island where things are disappeared. Birds, hats, roses all cease to exist as people wake up and they then have a short time to destroy any they still possess. In time it's like these things never existed at all. There are some people however who retain the ability to remember about them, there are also some who try and keep disappeared things. And it is the job of the Memory Police to track these people down and punish them.
Our main protagonist is a young unnamed author who discovers that her, also unnamed, editor is one who remembers and is in danger of being taken. With the assistance of her friend, an unnamed old man, she helps her editor hide. As life gets harder as food and other necessary things get scarcer, and with so many more things being disappeared, can our trio of heroes survive the test of the time?
My first concern with this book is that there is no explanation for actually why things get disappeared. All we know is that the book is set on a remote island with no contact with outside, especially since the ferry was disappeared. Who decides what goes and when and to what ultimate end? There are obviously repercussions to every disappearance, especially the ones after calendars are taken but I really struggled with accepting the concept without understanding it fully. Maybe it was obvious to others, maybe I missed some key things during reading - but, if so, they were quite well hidden and maybe a bit too subtle. I get that it's about memories and possibly about materialism and, definitely, about the human condition but I think I might have missed the overall point.
The ending also fizzled out a bit for me and I was left a bit unfulfilled. That said, the journey getting there was good, the writing, the characters and their stories did hold my attention. As did the "book within the book" which ran well alongside the main narrative.
As with all good translations, I have nothing to say about the translator as, to use my usual analogy, like a good sport referee, if you don't notice their existence, they've done a good job.
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

This is a dystopian fantasy, with an almost fairy tale or dreamlike feel to the story and writing. On an island that is probably part of Japan (though this is never explicitly stated) every once in a while something is 'disappeared'. When this happens the residents of the island wake up to find that all memory and meaning of the disappeared item (a hat, perfume, roses, et cetera) is gone from their heads, and when they encounter the physical item they feel very uneasy and have an overwhelming compulsion to be rid of the thing by burning it, washing it away down the river or in the sea... But not everyone has the same reaction to disappeared items. There are a few people that do not seem to be affected, and their memories of everything remain intact. These are the people that the Memory Police are interested in. The Memory Police are a military group that patrol the streets in their uniforms and green trucks, rounding up people who didn't forget, and once those people are picked up they are usually never seen again.

A strange little story that is beautifully written but is also very, very sad.

This is a lyrical, whimsical book suffused with sweetness. A young novelist lives on an island where, on a regular basis, items are ‘disappeared’. Residents wake up one morning to know that something has gone - one day hats no longer exist, another day birds. They know they must dispose of any of these objects at once, to avoid the attention of the Memory Police, who closely monitor the island and wipe out any trace of disappeared objects.

But the novelist learns that not everybody forgets. Some people seem able to remember everything that has been disappeared - and when one of these people turns out to be her own editor, she puts everything at risk to help him evade the Memory Police.

Beautifully written and haunting in tone, this is a bittersweet book.

On an unnamed island, everyday things are slowly disappeared by the memory police as our narrator, a young novelist and her friend, old man find ways to cope, not only with the disappearances but also with forgetting these things ever existed. Those few, like our narrator’s editor, whose memories remain intact, are taken away by the police, never to be seen again. Only the narrator decides to help her editor.

The Memory Police is a quiet, contemplative dystopia of every day. It may allude to an authoritarian/ totalitarian regime behind the disappearances but we are never told about the goals of the police and there is no discontent or rebellion. There is only compliance and learning to live without. In this, I found The Memory Police rather refreshing. It is more of a meditation on memory, identity, freedom and the self. It is also somewhat unsettling. Interspersed within the chapters about our narrator’s everyday life are chapters of her novel, in which another woman has lost her voice. As novels themselves are disappeared, our narrator struggles to finish hers. In this struggle she reveals that missing memories are like holes in her heart.

At the same time, I thought The Memory Police a good book but not wholly convincing and was left with many questions. For example, early on, we are told that ferry – means of getting off the island had been disappeared long before yet the narrator will occasionally still use the word “ferry” (Ogawa’s quotation marks) even though to her it shouldn’t have any meaning whatsoever. Things from nature also disappear but whether birds and roses disappeared or these disappearances were something like mind control of the islanders is unexplained. Ogawa’s purpose was to give us the long term effects of a repressive regime on ordinary individuals, in which she succeeded beautifully but I still found myself wanting to see more of a bigger picture.

Three and a half stars.

My thanks to Netgalley, Random House UK, Vintage Publishing and Harvill Secker for the opportunity to read The Memory Police.

Yoko Ogawa's books are really different from each other and that's what I love about her writing. She's very capable of changing her style and still write a gripping story.
This is a dystopian book. We're in a state where there's extreme control by the Memory Police and people start to forget their memories gradually. In the end, it comes to the point that people don't remember anything and can't even escape the island. Few people manage to prevent this loss, but they are also under the threat of Memory Police reaching them.

The book is very interesting and thought provoking. It makes you put yourself in those shoes and figure out what you'd do. I really enjoyed it and would recommend it.

Thanks a lot to NetGalley and the publisher for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was a random find on here but it intrigued me. I don't think I've ever read anything like this before. I was interested in why things disappeared. Who the Memory Police was.
Although I got into this pretty quickly I did find myself not losing interest but I found myself just not feeling it.
I was struggling to want to read this. I took a couple of days break hoping it would help but it made it worse for me. I found myself lost and not caring.
I ended up DNFing at 62% I just felt myself going into a reading slump and I didn't want that. Maybe I'll give it a go in audiobook format one day.

On a secret island with no name, things are slowly disappearing — hats, ribbons , roses, birds. Residents discard these items and have no recollection of them — they tend to forget them entirely. However if you are a resident who cannot get rid and forget about it, a secret police — the memory police will come and find you to uphold their mission to ensure that the disappeared remains forgotten. The are determined to ensure that all memories and identities vanish in order to prevent them from disturbing the resident’s peace of mind.

Amongst the residents is a novelist. Concerned that her editor who is struggling to forget and hide his memories will be taken away by the memory police, she attempts to hide him under the floorboards of her home, and preserve whatever they can as a way to keep the past alive.

A fable and metaphor about the significance of memory and what it means to us, it brings home the trauma of loss and gives us space to reflect and contemplate. Poignant, poetic and nostalgic, it will make you appreciate the small things in life.

This book works on a number of levels. A lot of other reviews pick up on the dystopian elements, and the authoritarianism of the Memory Police themselves, comparing the novel to Fahrenheit 451, 1984 or our own global lurch to the right, and that element is definitely there, but I found it resonated for me on a quieter, more personal level. Maybe due to circumstances in my own life, I couldn't escape the idea that the set up of the book is a metaphor for dementia, and the gradual erasure of self that brings about. It's full of lovely turns of phrase and poetic imagery (the rose petals in the river!), but it's an unsettling read, one that has lingered in my mind for several days after finishing.

I really enjoyed this book.

A vision into a state under extreme control by the Memory Police where gradually things disappear from the memories of the world, for example, no memory of ferries means no-one can escape the island.

A few people escape the memory losses - however they themselves are at danger of being removed by the Memory Police and need to seek hiding places.

The book makes you question the things around you, and you will try and imagine yourself in the same situation! What would it be like if we didn't have books? If you didn't have a voice, would you still be you? Thought provoking and a recommended read.

This is a strange and unsettling story in which our protagonist tries to survive in a world in which objects and memories are continually being removed by a totalitarian regime. It gripped me as a read and gave lots of pause for thought. I particularly enjoyed the story-within the-story, the novel that the protagonist was writing which was really sinister, although I couldn't actually understand how it reflected on the main story. I suppose this gets to the heart of why I have given 3 stars. Yes it's an allegory but of what? For what? I dont know if it was just a bit too deep for me. There are aspects that feel like a commentary on Nazi Germany for example, or North Korea but this doesn't really capture the more ethereal or fairy tale elements of the narrative. All in all, I enjoyed it but I didn't get it.

This is a well written book that clearly appeals to a number of people but not for me, I did not like it. The style in which the book is written is interesting, We do not know the names of anything, not the Island, not the people within it nor the places. Individuals are identified by trade or role, the only indentifier is R. Thus we too can have no memory of these people. That said I did not enjoy it. There is no back story, I have to be careful here not to spoil but we end the book not knowing the who, the how or the why and for me this makes it pointless. I found the story a little disturbing and did not enjoy it. Had this not been a netgalley copy I would not have continued reading.

A very interesting premise - that a regime can literally remove things from the collective memory, even though the things themselves continue to exist. The gentle storytelling makes the slow creep of unease all the more interesting.

Originally written in Japanese, this edition is translated by Stephen Snyder. It is set on an unnamed island where things keep disappearing. The Memory police will then systematically take and destroy all things relating to the thing that disappeared. None of the characters are named; the closet we get to a name is a character called R. As you may be able to guess from the title of the book, memory and its importance to us plays an important role in the plot. It was an interesting and at times unnerving read. I found it to be a fairly slow read, as I felt it was one of those books you need to take your time over. I would definitely recommend checking it out if the synopsis intrigues you.

This is a beautifully told fable about how a totalitarian state seeps into lives of its citizens, first controlling their possessions, then themselves. An unnamed novelist is struggling to write her latest novel amidst ‘disappearances’ on her island. Now the ‘ferry’ has disappeared from memory their community is more isolated than ever. But not everyone forgets...and the Memory Police are there to ensure order and enforce forgetting. The protagonist harbours her editor who retains all his memories, but when parts of herself begin to disappear it becomes ever harder to keep him safe. Within the story, we see the novelist’s manuscript-in-progress about a woman whose voice is consumed by a typewriter and who slowly loses her sense of self. This is a perfect complement to the main action. In all, this is Japan’s answer to Fahrenheit 451 and a moving read.

This book is a fairly gentle story of an island where things are being erased from people's minds. The concept was sad yet interesting, as the memory Police make innocent things like roses and perfume disappear.
But, for some reason, this book just didn't grab me. I wasn't that interested in the novel the main character is writing and I felt it kept encroaching on the story rather than enriching it. The characters were okay but the lack of names and descriptions meant I didn't really empathise with them. I'm sure it was a technique linked with the idea of controlling thoughts but I found the characters in the novel to be distant. The mystery surrounding the mother and the others who still remember wasn't enough to keep me reading..
Overall, I found this novel very blah.

"You're the same person now that you were when you wrote novels. The only thing that's changed is that the books have been burnt. But even if paper itself disappears, words will remain. It will be all right, you'll see. We haven't lost the stories."

Rating: 3.5 stars

Usually on a 3.5 stars I round it down to 3 stars out of 5, but I'm making an exception for this one because I absolutely couldn't put this book down. Once I'd gotten started, I was reading it at work in between orders, and stood in the kitchen waiting for food.

The Memory Police is an allegorical dystopia that, ultimately is about so much more than it appears. On the island of this story lives a novelist, working on her manuscripts quietly and trying to keep under the radar of the Memory Police who anyone who doesn't lose their memories when things disappear. But at heart, this is a book about humanity and personality and asks a lot of interesting questions about how our memories and experiences, and our feelings about those experience shape who we are as a person. It's an overall unnerving read, actually discomforting in parts. I described it to my housemate as giving me a 'general aura of stress'. I think this is going to be the kind of book that I'm thinking about for a while before all the implications sink in.

A strange and arresting novel that draws you ever inward, The Memory Police is dreamlike and melancholy.
It is best read with the expectation of an art piece - whilst I was teased by threads of plot and denouement, ultimately it is a book that focuses on an idea and a feeling, and explores that through the metephor of the memory police.
I enjoyed it, however, I would have preferred that the protagonist find out more about what is happening to them, why, and fix it. I'm aware this opinion comes from reading too many fantasy novels with a quest, but it started in a similar vein, but then changed into the art-novel.
Recommended for readers of Murukami.

'The Memory Police' is a strange, haunting novel - a kind of dystopian allegory centred around the theme of memory. In her understated, unsettling prose, Yoko Ogawa explores how our pasts - our intimate, every day histories - shape us.

Many aspects of the world are left unexplained - and readers hoping for a thrilling dystopian plot will probably be disappointed. But that doesn't make the island setting, slowly succumbing to the effects of climate change and oppressed by the sinister Memory Police, any less ominous. In fact, it just adds to the effect of a vague, indistinct world from which anything can disappear at any moment.

'The Memory Police' makes for an unsettling, thought-provoking read; an eerie exploration of memory, survival and what makes us human.

Who we are strongly depends on our past experiences and the reality that has surrounded us, so what happens if, bit by bit, this reality is made to disappear, and with it the memories ingrained in our hearts? In Yoko Ogawa's highly allegorical novel, the enigmatic "memory police" is controlling the population of a remote island, subjugating the inhabitants by continually forcing them to destroy and forget things like roses, perfume or birds, and all memories attached to them. Every lost memory leaves a new hole in people's hearts, but those who won't forget will be taken away and might get killed. How long can a person endure when those trying to control their mind eat away at their heart?

Our protagonist is an unnamed young novelist, thus a person who professionally creates coherence and identity, who aims to preserve and represent the world in narratives. When the memory police prepares to arrest her editor because he is unable to erase his memories, she hides him in her home, aided by an old man she befriended. Secretly, she tries to proceed working on her latest novel about a woman who has lost her voice - this whole novel-within-the-novel is twisting and reflecting the narrated world, asking questions about expression (losing your voice and losing your memory), freedom (being phsyically and psychologically captured), and death (losing your identity and losing your phsyical self). In all constellations Ogawa presents, I was fascinated by the protagonists' coping mechanisms, which you could often just as well call self-betrayal - this text is also a meditation on the workings of the mind under the conditions of authoritarian terror or human cruelty.

In this novel, a lot remains unexplained, e.g. why some people can and others can't forget as ordered by the memory police, what the ultimate goal of the memory police is (if they even have one beyond total control), or who their bosses are. Sometimes, I also felt like the author wasn't able to stringently employ her narrative concept, because how should the characters refer to things after they have disappeared? On top of that, there is the theme of climate change hovering in the background, but it isn't coherently tied into the main storyline. Still, these factor do not diminish the impact of the text, which more than anything is set up to be an allegory. In this respect, Ogawa's work reminded me of the wonderful Han Kang.

"The new cavities in my heart search for things to burn. They drive me to burn things and I can only stop when everything is in ashes", explains the narrator's editor at one point. This book contains numerous sentences like this one, investigating the relationship between memory, feelings, freedom and identity. A very worthwhile read, cleverly constructed and rendered with a lot of poetic sensibility.