Buzzfeed's #1 Book to Read this Spring
A Best Book of the Month at The Washington Post, Bustle, and Chicago
Review of Books
MEM is a rare novel, a small book carrying very big ideas, the kind of
story that stays with you long after you've finished reading it.
Set in the glittering art deco world of a century ago, MEM makes one
slight alteration to history: a scientist in Montreal discovers a method
allowing people to have their memories extracted from their minds, whole
and complete. The Mems exist as mirror-images of their source --
zombie-like creatures destined to experience that singular memory over
and over, until they expire in the cavernous Vault where they are
kept.
And then there is Dolores Extract #1, the first Mem capable of creating
her own memories. An ageless beauty shrouded in mystery, she is allowed
to live on her own, and create her own existence, until one day she is
summoned back to the Vault. What happens next is a gorgeously rendered,
heart-breaking novel in the vein of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.
Debut novelist Bethany Morrow has created an allegory for our own time,
exploring profound questions of ownership, and how they relate to
identity, memory and history, all in the shadows of Montreal's now
forgotten slave trade.
