![]() ![]() Days later the erasure is so complete that they are “unable to remember what this thing called a rose looked like”. Rose bushes are dug up and all images and writings about roses are burned. One morning they find a river covered with rose petals, flowing downstream “as if someone had hypnotised each one of them and was drawing them toward the sea.” It is the first step in the eradication of all signs of roses. ![]() There are no howls of protest or anguish the islanders just remark on the strangeness of the latest developments and then ” shrug them off with as little fuss as possible and make do with what’s left.” Things tend to disappear overnight and the islanders wake up with a vague awareness that something has gone. There is no warning of a new disappearance or any announcement. ![]() Lighthouses, books, maps and calendars are among the objects that have been made to “disappear”. The lives of its inhabitants are controlled by an unknown force that causes objects to disappear. ![]() The novel is set on an unamed island somewhere in the world (there are hints of Asia but this is never made explicit). The last book I’d read by Yogo Ogawa – Revenge – was disturbing and strange but The Memory Police is in another league all together. The Memory Police qualifies as the most unsettling novel I’ve read this year. ![]()
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