Review by New York Times Review
lately, I've traveled through the wormhole of paranormal podcasts, ones that focus on the impossible and uncanny. Some of the best include "Astonishing Legends," "Mysterious Universe" and "MonsterTalk." The granddaddy of such podcasts is "Coast to Coast AM." On these fine shows I've learned about the Bell Witch, an entity that terrorized a family in Tennessee in the 1800s; Disappearing Object Phenomenon, which explains why common objects tend to go missing in one's home; and, of course, the "Nazi Werewolf Organization." I'm sure there are listeners, probably many, who believe everything described in these podcasts, and some who claim to have experienced them. I don't and I haven't. I'm a skeptic, though not quite an unbeliever - yet that doesn't diminish my enjoyment of these shows. They often have the feel of friends sitting at a bar, or gathered around a campfire, trading spooky stories to pass the time. That's the fun of it, really: You think that was wild, listen to this! All of which is to say I was in the perfect state of mind to pick up Blake Crouch's "Recursion," a heady campfire tale of a novel built for summer reading. There are two central characters: Barry Sutton, an N.Y.P.D. detective, and Helena Smith, a neuroscientist in Palo Alto who studies memory. The book opens with Barry being called to the Upper West Side to help a woman threatening suicide at the Poe Building. The woman, Ann, suffers from a condition called false memory syndrome in which people think that they are living the wrong life, that another timeline of existence has been overwritten in order for them to live a new one. Think of it as erasing a drawing on a sheet of paper and starting a new one on the same sheet: The trace of the old image remains; you can't unsee it. The discrepancy between the two drives sufferers mad, turns them suicidal. Ann is a single investment banker, but she also remembers being a married woman who ran a landscaping business in Vermont; the couple had a 9-year-old son, Sam; she's sure of it. But none of that ever happened. They're all false memories. So why does she clearly recall Sam's laugh, the birthmark on his left cheek, his first day of school? She jumps to her death because she can't live with the loss of that phantom child. Barry, witnessing her leap, wonders if Sam really was a false memory, or if something else is going on. Cut to Helena, in her lab more than a decade earlier, in 2007, "examining the image of a mouse's memory of being afraid - fluorescently illuminated neurons interconnected by a spider web of synapses." Because her mother suffers from severe memory loss, Helena's goal is to invent a special chair that will save Mom and, by extension, so many others from this fate. The invention itself seems dauntingly faroff, though, "light-years away." In short, she doesn't have any funding, the eternal scientific hurdle. But then a stranger appears in her office. He knows all about her chair and why no other entities are ever going to fund it. "Because what you really want is bank-breaking. You don't need seven figures. You need nine. Maybe 10. You need a team of coders to help you design an algorithm for complex memory cataloging and projection. The infrastructure for human trials." This man works for someone who will give her exactly that - all the money and support in the world. Helena is hooked. Some of the novel's most rewarding tension is created as the reader anticipates how Helena's invention will lead to Barry and Ann at the Poe Building. Barry's and Helena's stories do eventually collide, but the journey is a gloriously twisting line that regularly confounded my expectations. I'm loath to say much about where this novel ends up, but suffice to say the memory chair will be built and used - and that false memory syndrome ends up being the tamest of its side effects. There's a faint political undercurrent to the novel. False memory syndrome is first reported in 2016. A character on CNN says: "If memory is unreliable, if the past and the present can simply change without warning, then fact and truth will cease to exist. How do we live in a world like that?" Maybe, finally, this is why I love those paranormal podcasts, and why I enjoyed "Recursion" so much. Those shows are often dismissed as fringe programming, and novels like this one damned as frivolous entertainment, but I believe they capture the disquiet of millions; they broadcast at an anxious frequency. The sense that our country's center is not holding pulses through the novel. The fear that we are losing our collective memory, of a stable nation for instance, doesn't read to me like fantasy. VICTOR lavalle'S latest novel is "The Changeling."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 4, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
In 2007, neuroscientist Helena Smith invents a ""memory chair,"" a device that can capture the memory of a specific event and then reintroduce that memory into a person's brain on command. Her aim is to help Alzheimer's patients, including her beloved mother. But the wealthy tech magnate who has the funds to make the chair a reality has more sinister motives. Come 2018, the world sees those motives in action: people are afflicted with False Memory Syndrome (FMS), in which they suddenly wake up one day with a new set of memories of a different life. These memories compete with their current ""real"" life and drive people mad. But are the new memories indeed false? Or are they evidence of the chair enabling time travel? New York detective Barry Sutton investigates an FMS suicide and finds himself entrenched in a past, present, and future he never could have imagined. Crouch fills his follow-up to Dark Matter (2016) with mind-bending science, mounting suspense, and some romance. Readers may have to accept that they might not get the physics of what's going on, but, in a peculiar way, that's part of the fun.--Rebecca Vnuk Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Cutting-edge science drives this intelligent, mind-bending thriller from bestseller Crouch (Dark Matter). Neuroscientist Helena Smith, whose mother has dementia, has devoted herself to studying the biology of memory. She seeks "a way to save memories for deteriorating brains that can no longer retrieve them." Her struggle to find grants for her work ends in 2007 when inventor and philanthropist Marcus Slade offers her carte blanche to pursue her work on his facility located on a repurposed oil rig in the Pacific Ocean-unlimited funding, whatever computing power she needs, and a team of highly skilled scientists. Helena's research leads to some disturbing results. Meanwhile, in 2018 Manhattan, a woman jumps to her death from a tall building after telling the NYPD detective trying to save her that she has false memories of being married to a man whose first wife jumped from the same building 15 years earlier. Crouch effortlessly integrates sophisticated philosophical concepts-such as the relationship of human perceptions of what is real to actual reality-into a complex and engrossing plot. Michael Crichton's fans won't want to miss this one. Agent: David Hale Smith, InkWell Management. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Scientist Helena Smith focused on memory research when her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, hoping to enable others with memory loss to record their recollections and retain connections to their lives and loved ones. She did not anticipate that the technology her team developed would allow users to travel back into those memories and change the entire fabric of reality. The results of their invention begin to manifest as False Memory Syndrome (FMS), which causes additional sets of memories suddenly to appear and coexist simultaneously (not always comfortably) in people's minds. Det. Barry Sutton is drawn to investigate the phenomenon and its origins when he fails to prevent the suicide of an FMS victim. He and Helena join forces to find a way to save humanity from the monstrous creation. VERDICT This latest technological thriller from Crouch (Dark Matter) is completely engrossing and should have wide appeal. Highly recommended, especially for readers who enjoy suspenseful, fast-moving, well-crafted, science-based sf. [See Prepub Alert, 12/6/18.]-Karin Thogersen, Huntley Area P.L., IL © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In Crouch's sci-fi-driven thriller, a machine designed to help people relive their memories creates apocalyptic consequences. In 2018, NYPD Detective Barry Sutton unsuccessfully tries to talk Ann Voss Peters off the edge of the Poe Building. She claims to have False Memory Syndrome, a bewildering condition that seems to be spreading. People like Ann have detailed false memories of other lives lived, including marriages and children, but in "shades of gray, like film noir stills." For some, like Ann, an overwhelming sense of loss leads to suicide. Barry knows loss: Eleven years ago, his 15-year-old daughter, Meghan, was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Details from Ann's story lead him to dig deeper, and his investigation leads him to a mysterious place called Hotel Memory, where he makes a life-altering discovery. In 2007, a ridiculously wealthy philanthropist and inventor named Marcus Slade offers neuroscientist Helena Smith the chance of a lifetime and an unlimited budget to build a machine that allows people to relive their memories. He says he wants to "change the world." Helena hopes that her mother, who suffers from Alzheimer's, will benefit from her passion project. The opportunity for unfettered research is too tempting to turn down. However, when Slade takes the research in a controversial direction, Helena may have to destroy her dream to save the world. Returning to a few of the themes he explored in Dark Matter (2016), Crouch delivers a bullet-fast narrative and raises the stakes to a fever pitch. A poignant love story is woven in with much food for thought on grief and the nature of memories and how they shape us, rounding out this twisty and terrifying thrill ride.An exciting, thought-provoking mind-bender. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
