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Summary
Summary
MEM is a rare novel, a small book carrying very big ideas, the kind of story that stays with you long after you've finished reading it.
Set in the glittering art deco world of a century ago, MEM makes one slight alteration to history: a scientist in Montreal discovers a method allowing people to have their memories extracted from their minds, whole and complete. The Mems exist as mirror-images of their source -- zombie-like creatures destined to experience that singular memory over and over, until they expire in the cavernous Vault where they are kept.
And then there is Dolores Extract #1, the first Mem capable of creating her own memories. An ageless beauty shrouded in mystery, she is allowed to live on her own, and create her own existence, until one day she is summoned back to the Vault. What happens next is a gorgeously rendered, heart-breaking novel in the vein of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go . Debut novelist Bethany Morrow has created an allegory for our own time, exploring profound questions of ownership, and how they relate to identity, memory and history, all in the shadows of Montreal's now forgotten slave trade.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Morrow's haunting debut novel, the year is 1925, and Dolores Extract No. 1 has been recalled to the Vault. Dolores Extract No. 1-or Elsie, self-named after a film character-is a Mem, physical beings that are part of a groundbreaking procedure developed to extract memories from humans. Mems store the traumatic or cherished memories that humans would like either to get rid of or preserve. Incapable of autonomous thought, Mems regurgitate an infinite loop of whatever memory they have absorbed until expiration, sometimes with horrifying results-except, somehow, Elsie, who has lived independently for 18 years. She is all too capable of understanding what her recall implies and what her continued lucid and corporeal existence must mean for her "Source," the original Dolores. There is a flat romantic subplot involving scientist Harvey Parrish, and the revelation of Elsie's existence might have been better left to the imagination. But Morrow's debut is ambitious and insightful, raising questions about memory, trauma, and humanity. The novel is at its best when it presents Elsie at her most human, forcing the real ones around her to reckon with what her personhood means for theirs. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A young woman's personality is the result of a startling experimental procedure, leaving her to struggle with the question of who she really is.This debut novel by multigenre fabulist Morrow is a haunting exploration of memory, identity, and mortality set in a vaguely sinister alternate-reality Montreal circa 1925. In this rendering, scientists have discovered a peculiar method of extracting memories from people and delivering them into "Mems," half-alive creatures whose purpose is to experience the memory over and over again in a fortress called the Vault until they die. But not our narrator, oddly enough. The story is told by a 19-year-old Mem who identifies as "Elsie," though her true designation is "Dolores Extract No. 1," meant to keep the memory of a car crash in 1906 from troubling her "source," Dolores Shepherd. But Elsie is a fully formed individual, capable of forming her own memories, the only Mem who's been allowed to live independently outside the Vault. Repeatedly she tells us, "I am a memory. Now I suppose I'll live like one," as she struggles with her place in this strange world. Called back to the Vault, Elsie learns that because Dolores has reached her maximum number of Mems, she is in danger of being "reprinted," wiping out her unique self. Protected by a kindly professor and his wife, Elsie encounters broken Mems, fractured Sources, and a smitten scientist during her evolution into a new kind of being. In studying memory, Elsie becomes even more aware of the damage resulting from this cruel practice. "What kind of people are we if we can't traverse the landscape of our own memories?" she asks. "What kind of people do they become who refuse?" These philosophical explorations ultimately culminate in a disturbing clash between Elsie and Dolores prime. With her dizzying concept, richly imagined narrator, ornate setting, and first-rate storytelling, Morrow offers an epiphany for readers of speculative fiction with echoes of ideas explored in films like Blade Runner and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.The defiant story of an impossible enigma who only yearns to be a real girl. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.