Beautifully written, and a thoroughly surprising and engaging story.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me read and review.

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

A strange and unsettling but brilliantly written story of an island where things are being disappeared by a sinister police force. One day you might wake up and find hats no longer exist, you could be presented with a hat, told it's a hat but you would not be able to comprehend the concept of what a hat is or does. The people find that their lives are getting narrower and narrower but for the most part placidly accept that is the way of things. Our heroine is a novelist who decides to protect her editor, one of the few people who doesn't forget and thus is hunted by the Memory Police. It is a dystopian novel unlike anything I've read before and is definitely worth reading.

Short yet powerful with a slow burn until the end which was both expected and unexpected. I loved the prose so I think the translation was great.

At times a hard read, this story is perhaps too close to the world we live in now, and therefore demands attention and trust from the reader. Whom, if they persist shall experience a book well worth the effort. Unique.

I’m sorry but I am not the right reader for this book. I hated it. I obviously didn’t understand - or had no time for - the underlying metaphor. Would have made a great difference if I had!

Puts you into a dream-like state of enchantment with the way it is written, almost like a fable. Yet at its core it is very chilling, almost traumatic, especially for anyone who has lived in a totalitarian state. The story within the story, of being imprisoned, is also extremely powerful.

I lived this dystopia tale that render makes you think about the meaning of memory and simple sights, sounds and smells.

This was a book that I've had my eye on for a while, and when I finally got to it, I absolutely adored it! We follow our nameless narrator, a novelist living on an island on which things disappear from memory - birds, sweets and others - under the ever watchful eye of the memory police, who look for those rare individuals who can still remember. Firstly, I thought that this idea was really intriguing and it is executed so well, that the horror builds up throughout the narrative as various things become lost. I loved the relationship between our protagonist, her editor, and the old man. The way in which these disparate lives intertwine to support one another is stunning and heartfelt. Utterly compelling.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Originally published in the original Japanese in 1994, the translation of Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police couldn’t have arrived at a better time than amidst a pandemic. Or worst depending on your outlook. But unlike some novels with a pandemic theme, The Memory Police isn’t about a medical threat, but rather a threat to the human mental state and the importance of memories and the objects that evoke them. An epidemic of forgetting.

Full review: https://westwordsreviews.wordpress.com/2021/02/15/the-memory-police-yoko-ogawa/

Set on an island, from time to time things disappear from the residents lives and no longer have any meaning to them and completely disappear from their memories. It could be anything that vanishes: the boats, hats, birds, flowers - they must be burned, thrown in the river, released or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets an item ever existed, though there are some who don't forget, but are in danger from being taken away by the Memory Police.

When a young novelist discovers that her editor R is someone who holds onto his memories, she wants to save him. With the help of a family friend, the old man, they devise a way to assist R, but if they are discovered the Memory Police will take them away too.

I like the premise of the story, and finding out what disappears next and helping R, but I was left wanting something else from this story and the ending was just there, quick and short. It didn't really focus on the Police, they just marched into view from time to time, making sure things went as they should. Theres no explanation of why its even happening. And I disliked having a novel within a novel, didn't add anything to the story.

I received this book from netgalley in return for a honest review.

An unsettling and bracingly sharp exploration of control, memory and salvation. I love books that defy categorisation and this is definitely one of those. Comparisons to the fables of Angela Carter and Orwell are accurate but this writer has a complex voice that is totally unique. For a dystopian, thought-provoking thriller you cant go far wrong with this one.

From the first page I was hooked. I could not stop reading this dystopian novel with 1984 feels. I loved the concept and the characters were all brilliant. The translation was fantastically well done and it was both compelling and clever.

I will definitely seek out this writer again.

Fantastically written allegory with an innovative narrative arc. I found the atmosphere within this book is perfectly evoked. I loved that there are lots of nods to various other dystopian books.

We all know my love of books that make me think. I love a thought-provoking read, and this was exceptionally well-written.

On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses—until things become much more serious. Most of the island's inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten.

This book was amazing. It felt very dark and mysterious, yet it also seemed so real. Our main character is an author and I loved how her stories ran alongside the main text. It created a fantastic element of contrast against the plot. Like I mentioned previously, it was such a thought-provoking read. The Orwellian vibes were very strong and it scared me with how easily it could translate into our normal modern society. As much as I loved it, I really struggled with the volume of questions that I was left with. So many points were raised, and the majority of these are major plot points, yet no answers are given. I would have loved to have seen these wrapped up!
Overall, I thought this was fantastic and I highly recommend it if you are a dystopian fan!

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

This book felt typical of other Japanese novels I've read lately, in that as you read them they feel quite gentle and almost slow. And then you can spend ages after you finish them thinking about what it all means. With The Memory Police, I'm still thinking and finding it really hard to know what to say about it. I very much enjoyed it and almost want to reread it already.

"When I was a child, the whole place seemed...how can I put this?... a lot fuller, a lot more real. But as things got thinner, more full of holes, our hearts got thinner, too, diluted somehow."

In premise, this book sounds very different to the other novel of Yoko Ogawa’s that I have read (and loved), The Housekeeper and the Professor; The Memory Police is set on an island where regularly objects will disappear - not physically, but from people’s memories. The objects hold no significance anymore, and memories associated with them begin to fade away. The memory police are there to make sure everyone is forgetting as they should be: anyone who doesn’t forget is disappeared, just like the objects. The narrator is a novelist, and when she finds out that her editor is not forgetting, she decides to hide him in her house in a tiny hidden room.

This sounds like a thrilling dystopian novel and to a certain extent it is; the tension and fear of discovery in certain moments are just as present and real as in any other book this may sound like. But that’s pretty much where the similarities end, and the magical Ogawa style that I love comes in.

The thing I loved most about The Memory Police is how the writing style somehow echoes what is happening to the characters: it is quiet and cool, but most of all evocative of a sense of unknown loss that must be accepted. I don’t know how to explain it other than the world and the characters feel distant and almost unreal, as if they’re painted from watercolours or fading like a memory. Because of this I didn’t feel particularly invested for most of the book, although I was intrigued, but it snuck up on me, making me care without realising I cared until the ending, leaving me feeling chilled and slightly lost. We also get to read extracts of the narrator's novel in between the rest of the narrative, which at first seems merely bizarre, but gets increasingly creepy as the similarities between the novel and what is happening to the narrator get closer together.

If you want answers and explanations, you will be disappointed by this book. But if you want a unique and incredibly well-drawn atmosphere, and more thought-provoking questions than you can shake a stick at, this is the book for you.

With comparisons to 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, The Memory Police has a lot to live up to. I went in to this book with very high hopes.

On a unnamed island, the population go about their lives, they work, they play, they love, everything is normal apart from the fact the island is governed by The Memory Police. They maintain the disappearance of items, you see on this island an item you could be using one day could be “disappeared” the next. Gone, just like that.

The perfume you wore, the sweets you ate, all of a sudden they are vanquished to the past and the worst thing is nobody remembers them, they are wiped from the memories of the populace. The Memory Police make sure that everybody has forgotten and there are no remnants of those things anymore.

Our protagonist is a young novelist, she finds herself in quandary when her editor R comes under suspicion of the Memory Police, people who fall in their path never come back, so she hatches a plan with her friend The Old Man to hide R. R she knows is dangerous because he still remembers everything that has been taken away. He must be protected at all costs to ensure the memories of the past are never forgotten.

I enjoyed this book, the descriptions of how random items disappear was unsettling, how something like a rose can be there one day but the next gone and forgotten. I would say it is a dystopian read but not a bloodshed and bombs dystopian, there are no zombies or fallout shelters, there is simply quiet rebellion.

The one thing I would like to know more about is how all this came to be, where did The Memory Police come from, why do they do the things they do? They are very mysterious in their directives. Also why are certain things chosen over others?

It was so nice to read a dystopian novel that went slowly, If you have read and enjoyed 1984, then definitely give this a try.

Thanks to Net Galley for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I finished this book in one sitting, which is rare for me. It was one of those stories that seemed to resonate very deeply with me on multiple levels. The story is an Orwellian and haunting mediation on on State Surveillance and its terrors. A large part of story relies on a certain ambiguity of setting and characters which, encourages the reader to read below the surface, to interpret subtext and fill in the gaps themselves. I personally found this very engaging as I tried to figure out the world Yoko Ogawa was creating for us. The book itself is not fast paced or high drama. Rather it is quite a gentle read. Similar in vein to The Last Children of Tokyo. Plenty of questions are thrown up with no definitive answers given. The reader can take what they will from what has been presented.
While the story can seem murky, this is entirely intentional. It talks about how memory can be very easily altered and we can forgot with apparent ease. We can draw a blank over our history to make the present more comfortable. It is about the human ability to adapt to the situations we find ourselves in and how memory plays a role in that. Sometimes givings us hope, and other times helping us forget better circumstances. This is a book that will be rattling around in my head for months to come and I will no doubt not forget this story and its message.

Yoko Ogawa has won every literary award there is in her country. That’s how the novel is introduced before it begins, and it struck me as an odd thing to write. Each story stands alone. Why should my enjoyment of this story be affected by what other people think or how she is judged? But as I finished reading about a trapped writer writing about a writer who was trapped it occurred to me that maybe it’s all part of the same narrative.

Ogawa blends reality and fiction in a way that the dystopian events around her become understandable to us. We live on an island where things have gone wrong. Things disappear — ordinary things, things that shouldn’t matter to the people in power — and life goes on. How much can we stand to lose? Today it’s a rose but tomorrow?

What can you let go of right now? Your laptop, phone, coffee, children, parents? There’s a sense of a Buddhist letting go in this story. Remembering how things used to be hurts. When you don’t remember, however, you can float away, free.

Does the same life go on? What does it mean and what are the consequences? Her lyrical approach to reality and to isolation helps us explore how it feels. Seeing it through a Buddhist angle shifts the narrative from the dystopia we are used to.

In the reviews, many compare it to Orwell’s 1984. There is a secretive police that round up those who won’t obey. They are then tortured and murdered. Some come back — those found not guilty/useful — but most are never seen again. We do have a sense that they are uncaring and certainly destructive.

This is a wonderful narrative. I never quite knew where I would end up as I followed our nameless characters. We don’t find out their names. We learn of R — her editor — and the old man, and her mother and father. We don’t find out her name. Which makes sense. Are our names in our diaries? Do we need them when we talk to ourselves, or listen?

Jesus was such a great Buddhist that he even gave up his own body. Ogawa wonders and answers, what happened next?

The Memory Police was published 15 August 2020