A review by toniclark
The Memory Illusion: Remembering, Forgetting, and the Science of False Memory by Julia Shaw

5.0

It’s a little scary to think of how much of our past is probably fictional — especially since our sense of self very much depends on our memories. It’s equally scary to think about what or who we’d be without them. This book draws together many different lines of memory research, including studies of false memories, cognitive biases, flashbulb memories. It’s amazing how prone to errors, both small and large, our memories are. And it’s sobering to consider the implications for eyewitness testimony and the criminal justice system. Shaw is not only a memory researcher herself, but also a criminal psychologist. In this book, she draws on psychology, neuroscience, and criminology to illustrate the many different kinds of memory errors we can and do make all the time and why it’s natural to do so.

The book does lead us to question our own histories and raises some fascinating questions about our constructions of reality. It can also make us more tolerant of others’ memory mistakes and a little less likely to insist, when we disagree with someone else’s recollection of events, that our own version is the true one.

I listened to the audiobook and the narrator, Siri Steinmo, was just wonderful. I usually prefer books read by the author for they are much more likely to sound like someone talking to me than someone reading to me. But this one is an exception. I noted a few mispronounced words, but they’re not frequent enough to worry over. A fascinating read or listen!