Bought during one of my impulsive book sprees, Ogawa’s The Memory Police’s visually arresting cover and rave ‘blurbviews’ from reputable publications were all that it took for me to buy it. Needless to say, I went into this book blindly. I totally had no idea what the plot was going to be, but the book quickly resolves this dilemma in its first chapter. By page 7, Ogawa has set up the novel’s conflict – people, on an island, lose things, concepts of such things, and their memories of such things. In the same chapter, Ogawa has also sewn what I thought was her novel’s primary point of conflict: people on this island generally forget, except for some.

Then arise the most logical follow up questions – why are people made to forget on this island? Why do some not forget?

Prepped by her straightforward prose and early divulgences, I expected to know the answers in a few flips. Page 30, 50, 170, and 250 came – nothing. By page 270 of a 274-paged novel, I still did not know the answers.

The Memory Police, as it turns out, never offers the resolution we initially seek after reading its first chapters. Instead, it takes its readers on a journey of loss – one after another, and how this takes a toll on the protagonist. Its prose is, dare I say, unremarkable. Honestly, it was one of my first criticisms of the book when I was reading its early pages. What it lacks in syntactical fanfare, it compensates for its hypnotically icy undercurrent of a narrative. It’s a story that masquerades as a humdrum, but builds up to an irresistible narration that ultimately ends in a evocative culmination – forgetting, and being forgotten, are deathly haunting.

Rating: 4 / 5