Vanishing Without a Care: a review of Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police: by Jasper Evans
“One morning you’ll simply wake up and it will be over, before you’ve even realised. Lying still, eyes closed, ears pricked, trying to sense the flow of the morning air, you’ll feel that something has changed from the night before, and you’ll know that you’ve lost something, that something has been disappeared from the island.”
- Yoko Ogawa and Stephen Snyder, The Memory Police
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, translated into English by Stephen Snyder, is a deeply upsetting book. I read the final 100 pages in a single sitting, lying on my bed while the wind outside my student house rattled both our letterbox and the trapdoor to the unexplored attic space above my room. When the words disappeared, my chest ached with physical horror and I couldn’t shift the discomfort for a few days.
The book is set on an island, cut off from the rest of the world and subject to strange disappearances. But what vanishes are not just objects or even people. What goes missing from the island, more and more every year for decades, are people’s memories and ideas. As a reader, this concept was initially difficult to grasp in its entirety, but Ogawa does a wonderful and disturbing job of articulating the fictional phenomenon. One of the first scenes in the book includes the disappearance of birds. The birds themselves, as objects, do not vanish from the world. Rather, people’s ideas of what a bird is, what it means and symbolises, and any memories or emotions they might associate with birds, disappear from their minds with no hope of returning. From that point on, if anyone saw a bird, they would see only a creature with wings flying through the sky; it would have no name and mean nothing to them. On the surface, this seems odd but not particularly insidious. But as the book goes on and more things begin to disappear - fruit, pens, hats, books, seasons, and even parts of people’s bodies - the deterioration of the characters’ minds and souls becomes terrifyingly clear.
This is the first time I have ever seen this concept explored, and it is done so well. The book is categorically dystopian but eludes generic tropes. Ogawa does not bog the reader down with her world. Readers curious about the identities of the mysterious and threatening Memory Police, or the origins of the disappearances, will find no answers, only the disorienting lack of clarity experienced by the narrator herself. The island’s government is never even mentioned in the book. The focus is narrow, with a bare minimum of explicit worldbuilding. Ogawa instead hones the intimate narrative voice onto the relationships between her characters, and their immediate environment. As you read, you begin to feel powerless. You empathise with moments of loss and damage. You think about the things that have disappeared from your life that you will never get back. You think of the things you have forgotten so completely that you are not even aware of them. That is how it starts for the characters; they are not even aware of what they are missing. It is only as more of their being vanishes, that the hole inside them becomes pronounced enough to be noticed. Reading the book was a reflective experience. It made me think about inaction in the face of deterioration. There were times when I felt like shouting at the page: ‘Why is no one doing anything? Why is nobody trying to stop this?’ The answer was perhaps the most disturbing part of the book. As the people disappeared by increments, their ability to care was disappearing as well. Because the memories of their losses were being stolen away, they could not get angry, or motivated to make a change. They accepted their fate. It was so hard to read, but it felt true. Ogawa has tapped into a deep feeling and insecurity; people’s ability to lose themselves, losing even the ability to confront what is stealing them away.
I’m not sure how to respond to this book. It’s one of those reads where I came out thinking, ‘That book did something to me, but I’m not sure what.’ Although, one clear thought was: ‘Where did all the parts of me go after I lost them? I wish I had my own secret room to hide them in and keep them safe.’ But that wistfulness soured as I thought about the attic above me. I’ve never been up there, most of the time I don’t even think about it. After this book though, the thought of having a forgotten person wasting away up there was ugly and unsettling.
I’m in awe of the subtlety of Ogawa’s storytelling, and the subversion of narrative conventions and tropes. I would recommend The Memory Police to anyone. It will take you to an uncomfortable place. There’s something ugly there, and I don’t even know what it is. But Ogawa is guiding us to it and saying we must look; that we must try to understand it, for our own sake. As difficult as it is, having read the book, I agree.
Words by Jasper Evans
Edited by Tille Holmes