simplewords 's review for:

These Memories Do Not Belong to Us by Yiming Ma

4.5

challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

---

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada / McClelland & Stewart for sending this ARC. This review is voluntary; all opinions are my own.

These Memories Do Not Belong to Us is a speculative fiction that shows me again why I love the genre. 

It is a series of interconnected short stories with a frame story to help provide direction and context. The stories themselves range from intriguing to incredibly disturbing, in the best way possible. Put together, they provide a mind-warping commentary on government control, technology, identity, and what is worth fighting for. 

After reading all the stories with varying levels of dystopian horror, ‘Reincarnation’ deals a devastating blow in the way only the best speculative fiction can. What does it mean to be human? What makes you ‘you’? If your memories aren’t your own, who are you? I had to take a break from the book after this part, as I had a bit of a existential spiral and needed a breath of fresh air after the grief of witnessing what the characters had endured.

After ‘Reincarnation,’ which is easily the emotional peak of the book (if the stories are read in order), the stories become a little more personal, no less lacking in quality but tapered back a bit in tension. The last story and final instalment of the frame story work together to bring home the final messaging and the key theme of resistance found in all dystopian literature. It gives a soft landing point after breaking your brain and punching you in the heart, which I think is kind, and helps redirect focus where it should be - the what ifs and horrifying potential realness that dystopian and speculative fiction is known for. 

Do I think we could ever live in a world like the one presented in These Memories Do Not Belong to Us? God I hope not. (Even if I recognize that many things in this book are just a more futuristic version of things that have already happened.)