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The Memory Addicts
Without memory, how might a society survive?
In Derek Kannemeyer's novel, a memory loss pandemic turns the world's billions into cataleptic husks. One person in twenty is immune, others hang on, wildly medicated—but can a civilization so brutally diminished recover?
Before the pandemic hits, Jody and Millar work at a Virginia medical research facility. A memory drug has run into problems. It sparks amazing restorations, but it also implants false memories. When Jody, for her own desperate reasons, steals a batch, she secures Millar's help. A dozen people close to them are pulled in; the drug becomes their only hope to jury-rig a half-reliable identity.
The Memory Addicts is a love story, and a plague story, but it's primarily the portrait of friends navigating a world in peril. Millar and Jody's tale remains pivotal. It is star-crossed, like all their stories, yet incredibly, collectively, most of their group has survived. And now, on this one climactic day, four years on, it all threatens to come apart.
At issue are the ways in which our dependence on memory shapes and shackles us. And the fragility of the stories that we live by, and that we leave behind us.
In Derek Kannemeyer's novel, a memory loss pandemic turns the world's billions into cataleptic husks. One person in twenty is immune, others hang on, wildly medicated—but can a civilization so brutally diminished recover?
Before the pandemic hits, Jody and Millar work at a Virginia medical research facility. A memory drug has run into problems. It sparks amazing restorations, but it also implants false memories. When Jody, for her own desperate reasons, steals a batch, she secures Millar's help. A dozen people close to them are pulled in; the drug becomes their only hope to jury-rig a half-reliable identity.
The Memory Addicts is a love story, and a plague story, but it's primarily the portrait of friends navigating a world in peril. Millar and Jody's tale remains pivotal. It is star-crossed, like all their stories, yet incredibly, collectively, most of their group has survived. And now, on this one climactic day, four years on, it all threatens to come apart.
At issue are the ways in which our dependence on memory shapes and shackles us. And the fragility of the stories that we live by, and that we leave behind us.
346 pages, Paperback
Published September 13, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 26, 2022
In The Memory Addicts, Derek Kannemeyer presents one of the most intriguing concepts I've ever read, and one that is particularly relevant today. Drug addiction and memory loss--who among us does not have friends or family afflicted by one or the other, or both--and a pandemic to boot, something everyone can relate to. Except the pandemic that Kannemeyer invents is one where people are losing their memories and, in so doing, their identities as well. Some lose themselves to madness while others reinvent themselves thanks to an Alzheimers drug that was being worked on when the memory disease broke out.
Kannemeyer tells the story in an elliptical style that evokes the characters' confusion, jumping back and forth in time over a five-year period, creating a kaleidoscopic effect befitting this story. As some of the characters change identities and work through false memories, it feels like a trip through a carnival's House of Mirrors where everything is slightly distorted. When you come out the other end, you will be left with many questions about identity what part memory plays in your own life. The Memory Addicts is a thought-provoking adventure into the crazy world of "What if?"
Kannemeyer tells the story in an elliptical style that evokes the characters' confusion, jumping back and forth in time over a five-year period, creating a kaleidoscopic effect befitting this story. As some of the characters change identities and work through false memories, it feels like a trip through a carnival's House of Mirrors where everything is slightly distorted. When you come out the other end, you will be left with many questions about identity what part memory plays in your own life. The Memory Addicts is a thought-provoking adventure into the crazy world of "What if?"
October 13, 2022
Derek Kannemeyer’s debut novel, The Memory Addicts, tells the tale of a loosely-associated group of people struggling to survive on a secluded farm in the aftermath of a virus that has wiped out the memory of 95% of humanity. Some people have been able to resurrect some of their lost memory by taking “maddies” (cleverly named after Proust’s madeleines), although whether those memories are true or false is almost impossible to verify.
Fans of chronology and closure will likely not enjoy this novel. It is a time-hopping, shifting web of narratives, leaping from one character and one timeline to the next, slowly unveiling how characters are related to each other and their respective histories. Interspersed among recorded interviews and quotations from both imagined and “real” sources, these vignettes serve to provide the reader with snippets of the characters’ backstories, which, like their own memories, are disjointed and unreliable.
The novel’s questions about what comprises a self are worth considering. Do our memories make us who we are? Does that change when those memories cannot be trusted—especially when we know that even those of us unafflicted with the novel’s disease also have unreliable memories by definition?
Is there a part of me that wishes I had a definitive conclusion for these characters? Maybe. But the nature of the scenario with which we begin—the characters separated by a hurricane and, likely, scattered by their only-temporary memories—means the characters themselves probably never know each other’s fates, as they do not know the fates of people they knew before the pandemic.
The novel ends and begins with stories in fragments and characters left to sift the remains, to make something of what they’re left with. It’s about as much as any of us can do with what we have.
Fans of chronology and closure will likely not enjoy this novel. It is a time-hopping, shifting web of narratives, leaping from one character and one timeline to the next, slowly unveiling how characters are related to each other and their respective histories. Interspersed among recorded interviews and quotations from both imagined and “real” sources, these vignettes serve to provide the reader with snippets of the characters’ backstories, which, like their own memories, are disjointed and unreliable.
The novel’s questions about what comprises a self are worth considering. Do our memories make us who we are? Does that change when those memories cannot be trusted—especially when we know that even those of us unafflicted with the novel’s disease also have unreliable memories by definition?
Is there a part of me that wishes I had a definitive conclusion for these characters? Maybe. But the nature of the scenario with which we begin—the characters separated by a hurricane and, likely, scattered by their only-temporary memories—means the characters themselves probably never know each other’s fates, as they do not know the fates of people they knew before the pandemic.
The novel ends and begins with stories in fragments and characters left to sift the remains, to make something of what they’re left with. It’s about as much as any of us can do with what we have.
February 19, 2023
A WISHING SHELF BOOK REVIEW
18th February 2023
TITLE: The Memory Addicts
Author: Derek Kannemeyer
Star Rating: 4 stars
‘A compelling, character-led dystopian novel with a fine cast of characters.’ A ‘Wishing Shelf’ Book Review
REVIEW
I must say, if I was to award this book a grade for originality, it would be A Star! In this dystopian thriller, a memory loss pandemic has turned almost everybody catatonic or, as the author puts it, into cataleptic husks. Twenty percent seem to be immune; the rest rely on a memory drug. It helps them to remember – but what?
Now, if you happen to be looking for the next Hunger Games, this book is not for you. This is not a plot-driven story and, in many ways, it´s as confusing as hell. But it is a very enjoyable read if (I repeat, if) you enjoy character-led novels which jump all over the place and where everything felt or remembered by a character might or might not be real.
Personally, I thought it was a captivating read. Admittedly, it´s a slow burner, annoyingly slow in parts, and I often got horribly confused. But, like the characters addicted to the memory drug, I got addicted to trying to work out what was going on! I loved that the author forced me to work hard to keep up with the characters; not only who they were, but when they were, and where. Also, and for me this was the best bit, the ending wasn´t wrapped up in a bow. Like the rest of the book, it was sort of a mess too!
So, can I recommend this book? Yes, but only if you enjoy not only being captivated but also a little bit confused. As I say, it´s a complex story but, in terms of originality, it gets top marks.
A ‘Wishing Shelf’ Book Review
www.thewsa.co.uk
18th February 2023
TITLE: The Memory Addicts
Author: Derek Kannemeyer
Star Rating: 4 stars
‘A compelling, character-led dystopian novel with a fine cast of characters.’ A ‘Wishing Shelf’ Book Review
REVIEW
I must say, if I was to award this book a grade for originality, it would be A Star! In this dystopian thriller, a memory loss pandemic has turned almost everybody catatonic or, as the author puts it, into cataleptic husks. Twenty percent seem to be immune; the rest rely on a memory drug. It helps them to remember – but what?
Now, if you happen to be looking for the next Hunger Games, this book is not for you. This is not a plot-driven story and, in many ways, it´s as confusing as hell. But it is a very enjoyable read if (I repeat, if) you enjoy character-led novels which jump all over the place and where everything felt or remembered by a character might or might not be real.
Personally, I thought it was a captivating read. Admittedly, it´s a slow burner, annoyingly slow in parts, and I often got horribly confused. But, like the characters addicted to the memory drug, I got addicted to trying to work out what was going on! I loved that the author forced me to work hard to keep up with the characters; not only who they were, but when they were, and where. Also, and for me this was the best bit, the ending wasn´t wrapped up in a bow. Like the rest of the book, it was sort of a mess too!
So, can I recommend this book? Yes, but only if you enjoy not only being captivated but also a little bit confused. As I say, it´s a complex story but, in terms of originality, it gets top marks.
A ‘Wishing Shelf’ Book Review
www.thewsa.co.uk
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews