The ending of the book is powerful, imaginative, and poignant. Yoko Ogawa does a fantastic job of creating tight spaces with these settings, and the main characters house, or the snow falling constantly outside, are written beautifully. This is a great structure for the novel, and Yoko Ogawa should be praised for the creativity behind this book.Īs the book progresses, it gets progressively bleaker and darker, and also more intimate, as the world feels like it presses against our characters. The story is about language and memory and loss, and builds further upon the themes being told in the main story. Furthermore, the author employs a story within a story, allowing us to read some of the novel that the main protagonist is writing. They are mysteries to us, just like things that happen around the characters are mysteries to them.

On point with the themes of the story, the author makes a great decision not to give her characters names. “I was content now to listen to everything he said – like a child with the hem of her skirt spread, waiting to receive God’s chocolate from heaven.” The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa, His quiet words were absorbed into the night.” The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa, Some key examples of the great language in this novel:

It truly is a treat that this book from 1994 has been translated into English for a wider audience to access. Yoko Ogawa is an exceptional writer, with imagination and unique style, building on old themes and taking them in new directions. It is written in a dream-like, trance-like state, with thoughtful, melodic language. This book, by Japanese writer Yoko Ogawa, brings to mind elements and feelings of Kafka, George Orwell (1984), and Black Mirror or The Twilight Zone – but done successfully in a totally different style. One day, when her editor is going to be taken away by the memory police for being one of the few people who does not lose their memories, she decides to work with the old man to hide her editor from the memory police in the floorboards of her house. Having lost her mom, taken by the memory police for an unknown reason, she often visits an old man, a longtime family friend. Over time, birds, flowers, photographs, all are taken out of the collective memories of citizens.Īn unnamed novelist is doing her best to live her life in this dystopian world.

The mysterious memory police have the ability to enforce the people of the island having their memories taken away from them, by some unknown force or power. On an unnamed island, a police-like, mass surveillance state controls things carefully, down to the very memories of its citizens. Read 274-page hardcover edition in May 2020 Year of Release: 1994 / Year of English Translation: 2019 Book Review – The Memory Police – Yoko Ogawa

Yoko ogawa the memory police review