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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This story shares a lot in common with the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—in the fictional world that Jo Harkin has created here, there exists a company that is capable of erasing memories from people’s minds using a secretive procedure that they may or may not even remember having after the fact. Unlike in Eternal Sunshine, though, this procedure can’t erase entire people or relationships, just extremely specific memories.
Events in the book lead to widespread knowledge about the company doing these erasures, and suddenly people who have undergone this process are told about it and given the choice of whether or not to have the erased memories restored. We follow several characters in this position as they try to make this decision, and the meat of the novel is in how their choices affect their lives and relationships.
This premise hooked me immediately and provided infinite material for thought and discussion—it was the perfect book to talk about with friends who had also read it.
The writing is also gorgeous and bittersweet:
Events in the book lead to widespread knowledge about the company doing these erasures, and suddenly people who have undergone this process are told about it and given the choice of whether or not to have the erased memories restored. We follow several characters in this position as they try to make this decision, and the meat of the novel is in how their choices affect their lives and relationships.
This premise hooked me immediately and provided infinite material for thought and discussion—it was the perfect book to talk about with friends who had also read it.
The writing is also gorgeous and bittersweet:
How can you have nostalgia for somewhere you don’t remember being? How can you long, in a painful way, for something you don’t even know?
But she longs, all the same.
If you’re interested in memories and what-ifs and past trauma and self-examination and deliciously complicated relationships, definitely pick this one up.
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A speculative fiction novel that poses a fairly straightforward moral query - would you erase a bad memory if you had the chance? What are the implications about using this technology to change human being's memories? Written from multiple POVs.
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The idea of this book seemed so promising and indeed it was well written and drew me in. Until the end. The end just read like the author got tired of the book and made it end. I had hoped for so much more but instead got meh.
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Book Review: Tell Me An Ending by Jo Harkin
Tell Me An Ending is a science fiction novel about the effects that deleting traumatic memories have on a group of people including patients and clinicians.
In Tell Me An Ending Jo Harkin paints a portrait of a group of people interlinked by a desire to erase traumatic or unwanted memories by a popular clinic. The rules are pretty simple. They can’t erase anything criminal they’ve done, it can’t be an old memory and all the evidence that they had the procedure is completely locked down and private. The former patients never even knew that they had it done at all until a recent lawsuit forced the company to reach out to each client and offer a reversal. This book follows an emotionally closed off therapist for the company, a husband suddenly faced with the fact that his wife secretly had the procedure, a former police officer that is haunted by an incident he know longer remembers, a college student that is forced to re-trace her own footsteps to figure out what she’s hiding from herself and a young man drifting through cities around the world with no idea who he truly is. We stumble along in the dark with all the characters until what they really deleted is revealed.
Tell Me An Ending gives us a glimpse of a future that isn’t that impossible to imagine and asks the question of whether the risks are worth it. Are we still ourselves if we only remember good things? Do we learn anything about the world or who we are if we delete the bad? Are our negative experiences so deeply ingrained in us that even if we chemically erase them they find their way back to us?
I really enjoyed how each character was given their own personality and felt authentic. There were moments of darkness and tragedy but also bits of humor and wit. I really felt empathy for all the characters and could see why they took the actions they did. The clinicians also felt like they were doing good but the entire book brings up the idea of whether we often hurt more people (and ourselves) with good intentions.
I highly recommend this thoughtful and entertaining novel that explores the “what if?” of memory erasing
4.5 stars
slow-paced