Blake Crouch's recursion tells the story of a mysterious ailment that people suffer from. The extremely intriguing beginning promises an amazing adventure. Are you sure?
False Memories Team
The story starts interesting. Policeman Barry tries to convince a woman not to jump off a skyscraper. As it turns out, she suffers from ASD. In addition to her current single life memories, she remembers another reality in which she had a husband and a son. He cannot reconcile two contradictory versions of events, so he commits suicide. Her last words are “My son has been erased …” and thus begins Barry’s investigation. In addition, the figure of the researcher Helena was exposed. She was working on creating a certain invention. Thanks to him, people with Alzheimer’s, like her mother, could retain at least some memories.
Detective and scientist
We get to know the whole story from the perspective of two people – Barry and Helena. In the case of the detective, the story begins in 2018, and then we go back to 2007 to learn about Helena’s activities. The heroes, although they do not stand out, are quite interesting, they have their own dramas and problems that push them towards action. Apart from them, we have a mysterious businessman, Marcus Slade, interested in the Helena project. There are also characters more or less related to the three mentioned heroes, such as Jee-woon, the right hand of Slade. Of all of them, only Marcus stands out, mainly due to unusual motivation. I did not expect something seemingly so trivial to be his goal.
Past, future or present?
The release is satisfactory, although people are only people, so I came across one typo (“shifts”). There was also a lack of a larger space separating the end of the paragraph from the subsection in one place. Besides, everything is fine. It is worth mentioning that the cover has its own charm and intrigued me personally from the very beginning.
Already seen
In fact, after a promising start, I expected the author to take a completely different direction. Nevertheless, although I have a certain feeling that I have seen something similar, a few motives are very interesting. The author is able to attract people for longer. The closer to the end, the more difficult it is to break away from reading, although on the other hand – the ending did not surprise me completely. It was typical, schematic and too optimistic. It cannot be denied, however, that this is a great novel that asks important questions about human memory and memories.
Is it worth sitting in the “armchair”?
An intriguing story, decent heroes, exciting moments, difficult choices, interesting events and a typical ending. What more could you want? On the one hand, the theme of memories is brilliant, and on the other, it cannot be denied that although it is a solid position, unfortunately it does not bring a significant breath of freshness to the genre of sf or thriller. However, if someone is interested in the question of memories or the theme of déjà vu, he may take this position blindly.
