MEM is a literary fiction book by author Bethany C. Morrow.
An allegory for our times, exploring poignant questions about property rights and how they relate to identity, memory, and history, all within the shadow of the slave trade. The now-forgotten rule in Montreal.
MEM is a rare novel, a pamphlet filled with huge ideas.
MEM makes a small change to history: a scientist in Montreal discovers a method that allows people to extract memories from their minds, whole and complete.
The Mems exist as mirror images of their source zombie-like creatures destined to experience that peculiar memory over and over again, until they expire in the cave Vault where they were stored. store. And then there’s Dolores Extract #1, the first Mem capable of creating memories of its own. An ageless beauty shrouded in mystery, she was allowed to live alone and create her own existence, until one day she was summoned back to the Vault. The heartbreaking novel, beautifully rendered in the Never Let Me Go style by Kazuo Ishiguro.
This is a beautifully-written book with an original setting and concept that just didn’t gel for me.
Set in the art deco world of upper class 1920s Montreal, Mem follows Dolores Extract #1, a traumatic memory extracted from a fragile society girl who, unlike all the other extracted memories in the steampunkesque Vault, can create her own memories. While the other mems relive their originating memories over and over again, Dolores Extract #1 is permitted to leave the Vault and live on her own as a person in her own apartment. What makes her different is a mystery. Her legal status as the property of Dolores forms the backbone of the conflict in the novel.
The novel is a delightful, frothy read. I may have expected too much from it, but with this premise, I was expecting something more thought-provoking and insightful. Instead the book provides a tidy ending with a resolution to why she’s different from the other mems (I found the reason itself, which I won’t spoil here, very satisfying) and then a tidy resolution to all the other plot issues which I found just too pat and rushed, without the emotional resonance of the rest of the book.
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MEM
