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A review by suzy_g
The Cleaners by Ken Liu
3.0
Okay, full disclosure: I read the entire 'Faraway' series simply because I'm a completionist, and I wanted to read this submission from one of my favourite short-story authors, Ken Liu. Truth be told, I have minimal interest in fairytale retellings having read very few good ones in my time. Turns out this was fairly lucky, as this was more of a 'Ken Liu' story than a 'retelling' anyway.
What I love most about Ken Liu's writing is his ability to dream up incredible, thought-provoking and original concepts that genuinely blow my mind. This one wasn't one of his best and it wasn't as unique as I'm used to seeing from him - but it was still intriguing enough to warrant development, leading to the outcome of a fairly solid, if a little underwhelming, short story.
In this story, memories are transferred from people to objects in a way that echoes virus transmission, i.e.: via touch and proximity. Almost everyone has some degree of sensitivity to the memories imbued in objects, meaning that if you want to forget - truly forget - someone/a time in your life, you would have to purge everything that they ever touched/anything that could remind you of that period. One way is to destroy such objects. Another way is to clean them.
Due to the distressing nature of memories you'd go to such lengths to rid yourself of, this is when most people seek out the services of a professional cleaner - such as Gui. Gui is an anomaly, in that he cannot feel the residue of any memories. He therefore isn't haunted by these, and can live a life free of all the damning consequences of such a 'gift'; but, of course, he also misses out on the benefits it can bring, too.
There is hardly a plot to speak of in this one (although I wouldn't say that that's entirely unheard of in Liu's writing); it is almost entirely concept and character driven. It discusses how material our emotional attachments can be, and how sometimes it is best to accept the life we are left with - bad memories and all. It suggests our innate ability to learn and grow from such life experiences and raises the question of whether it is really the right decision to rid ourselves of them, even if we can (think: 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind').
Overall this story felt more confined than I expected. Liu has always stretched the limits of a short story to the absolute max, giving me the experience of having read an entire novel in the space of 20-or-so pages. But in this case I simply got a short story, rather than a marvel.
When considering this story in the context of Liu's other works, I'd say I'm a bit disappointed. But when considering it in the context of the 'Faraway' collection, it is easily one of the better stories on offer.
What I love most about Ken Liu's writing is his ability to dream up incredible, thought-provoking and original concepts that genuinely blow my mind. This one wasn't one of his best and it wasn't as unique as I'm used to seeing from him - but it was still intriguing enough to warrant development, leading to the outcome of a fairly solid, if a little underwhelming, short story.
In this story, memories are transferred from people to objects in a way that echoes virus transmission, i.e.: via touch and proximity. Almost everyone has some degree of sensitivity to the memories imbued in objects, meaning that if you want to forget - truly forget - someone/a time in your life, you would have to purge everything that they ever touched/anything that could remind you of that period. One way is to destroy such objects. Another way is to clean them.
Due to the distressing nature of memories you'd go to such lengths to rid yourself of, this is when most people seek out the services of a professional cleaner - such as Gui. Gui is an anomaly, in that he cannot feel the residue of any memories. He therefore isn't haunted by these, and can live a life free of all the damning consequences of such a 'gift'; but, of course, he also misses out on the benefits it can bring, too.
There is hardly a plot to speak of in this one (although I wouldn't say that that's entirely unheard of in Liu's writing); it is almost entirely concept and character driven. It discusses how material our emotional attachments can be, and how sometimes it is best to accept the life we are left with - bad memories and all. It suggests our innate ability to learn and grow from such life experiences and raises the question of whether it is really the right decision to rid ourselves of them, even if we can (think: 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind').
Overall this story felt more confined than I expected. Liu has always stretched the limits of a short story to the absolute max, giving me the experience of having read an entire novel in the space of 20-or-so pages. But in this case I simply got a short story, rather than a marvel.
When considering this story in the context of Liu's other works, I'd say I'm a bit disappointed. But when considering it in the context of the 'Faraway' collection, it is easily one of the better stories on offer.