Michael Barnes
On an isolated island, a small population awakens some mornings with all knowledge of objects as mundane as stamps, valuable as emeralds, omnipresent as birds, or delightful as roses missing from their minds, ribbon, hat, bird. One by one, they all disappear, and soon, the inhabitants of the island forget they ever existed at all. The disappearances are enforced by the Memory Police, who force all to discard physical traces of the idea that has disappeared—often burning the lifeless ones and releasing the natural ones to the elements because “anything that fails to vanish when they say it should inconceivable,” they drop into homes for inspections, seizing objects and rounding up anyone who refuses—or is simply unable—to follow the rules.
Those who can remember when they shouldn’t are taken away, including the woman narrating whose mother was one who was taken early in this tale. She learns that her editor, R, can illegally remember the forgotten things, she fears for his life and secretes him away beneath the floorboards of her home with the help of her elderly neighbour.
It’s literary fiction where the concept transcends the boundaries, which could be difficult to accept for some, I imagined it as a metaphor for what exactly I was unsure. I found it well written, flowing clean, descriptive uncomplicated prose, not sure if that’s the writer or translator or both. By the amount of critical acclaim others regard the writing highly.
I found it a melancholic text, and the juxtaposition of the inner story about the woman and the typewriter and the primary story particularly poignant. I myself find such abstract apocalypses less engaging.
On an isolated island, a small population awakens some mornings with all knowledge of objects as mundane as stamps, valuable as emeralds, omnipresent as birds, or delightful as roses missing from their minds, ribbon, hat, bird. One by one, they all disappear, and soon, the inhabitants of the island forget they ever existed at all. The disappearances are enforced by the Memory Police, who force all to discard physical traces of the idea that has disappeared—often burning the lifeless ones and releasing the natural ones to the elements because “anything that fails to vanish when they say it should inconceivable,” they drop into homes for inspections, seizing objects and rounding up anyone who refuses—or is simply unable—to follow the rules.
Those who can remember when they shouldn’t are taken away, including the woman narrating whose mother was one who was taken early in this tale. She learns that her editor, R, can illegally remember the forgotten things, she fears for his life and secretes him away beneath the floorboards of her home with the help of her elderly neighbour.
It’s literary fiction where the concept transcends the boundaries, which could be difficult to accept for some, I imagined it as a metaphor for what exactly I was unsure. I found it well written, flowing clean, descriptive uncomplicated prose, not sure if that’s the writer or translator or both. By the amount of critical acclaim others regard the writing highly.
I found it a melancholic text, and the juxtaposition of the inner story about the woman and the typewriter and the primary story particularly poignant. I myself find such abstract apocalypses less engaging.