Blurb Book Review: The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller (spoilers ahead)

Cover image from Goodreads.com

I tend to read books without remembering why I put them on hold at the library. When I pick the book up I don’t read the inside flap. Instead, I just start reading and see how long it takes me to figure out what’s going on.

That said, I finished this book and didn’t really know what to think of it.

The meat of the story is that Neffy participates in a vaccine trial during a pandemic. Things go wrong fast, but she can’t really comprehend what’s happening as the first week after receiving the vaccine and virus are a slurry for her. When she finally is somewhat aware, she learns that four other people remained in the building with her. None of those four had received the vaccine or virus.

So I thought the book was about these four people learning to get along with limited supplies and an uncertain future outside the walls of the building. The pandemic is twofold: one part memory loss and the other part physical transformation (bloating, bruising) before ultimate death. Quick acting, the pandemic seems to have wiped out the entire population in under twenty-one days.

But then, without much warning, a new plotline developed. One of the participants brought along his new technology called the Revisitor. While using this device, people can go back into their memories and re-live them, simultaneously being their younger self and their current self.

This left me with questions immediately. Like, why did he bring this to the trials? Why wasn’t this technology widespread yet if it worked so well? What was the point of Neffy revisiting her old memories? Was this Revisitor a puzzle piece for the plot of surviving a pandemic?

Those questions were answered quickly, very near the end. I felt like I had to slog through a lot of memories, memories that ultimately don’t mean much to the plot of surviving a pandemic, to get answers.

This was bothersome for me. Not only were the memories not really needed for the plotline, they were basically backstory of Neffy’s life to date. None of this mattered, not really. This meant, for me, that the Revisitor was just a plot device to show how you can experience memories as a contrast to a pandemic about losing memory. Honestly, this felt forced. If Neffy was losing her memories this Revisitor might have had a better place, maybe saving her by reminding the brain of the pathways to memory and thereby circumventing the pandemic’s affects. But she wasn’t losing her memories and she survived anyway.

Another plotline crept up as backstory. Again, this didn’t fit well with the plot. Neffy, from the beginning, is writing letters to someone titled H. We find out quite far into the book that H is an octopus. She worked in an aquarium, had a degree in marine biology, and released this octopus into the ocean.

Was the author trying to show how Neffy’s kindness helped this octopus live its best life, therefore, Neffy’s kindness will help the four remaining humans live their best life? Or was the author showing how Neffy had an odd relationship with animals and therefore thought of them above humans? I was very confused as to why these letters were included, except to show even more of Neffy’s backstory.

The ending was also unsatisfying. I was left with more questions than answers. The last chapter, a single sentence, takes place fifty-four years after Neffy receives the vaccine and virus and has a character using the Revisitor. But why? To visit what memories? There are hints that civilization continued, but how would the technology persist after humanity was nearly wiped out?

On the bright side, the narrative drive was presented well enough to keep me reading. I wanted to know if Neffy would become addicted to the Revisitor and not help the other four, or go out and search for food even though she’d rather be steeping in memory.

I felt like the author had some good elements for a story – pandemic, new technology – but was presented clumsily.