Recursion

Recursion by Blake Crouch

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


One time about 15 years ago a car crashed into me. The car had run a blinking red light, smashed into the driver’s side of my little ‘92 Honda Civic, spinning it 90 degrees. The car missed the vital spots, somehow hitting between my gas tank and my door.

At the time, I was so pissed about the person running the light, clearly at fault for damaging my car that it wasn’t until hours later that I realized how lucky I was that my car was still functional and that I hadn’t died. (I drove it for 5 more years after that and never did fix that body damage.)

But what if I had been hit? WHAT if my car had been totaled?

What if I had died?

In another memory, I probably did die, and this reality that skewed from that point means that I am not even writing this right now….

These were the thoughts that ran through my head as I read this terrific novel.
Blake Crouch hasn’t written so much an alternate universe novel, but an alternate memory novel…where neuroscientist Helena Smith has invented a device that allows people to revisit old memories which somehow causes reality to change for everyone. Whole lifetimes are impacted by changes made, and the whole world is aware of trace memories that come and go and in many cases, drives them mad.

What if the weight of the world was on you? And you had to relive parts of your life over and over again, knowing that failure would only lead to another retry?

It’s a big head scratcher to think about the possibilities. And even more of one to consider if you could actually change those things, even while the world holds lingering memories of the things that were changed…

Blake Crouch hits it out of the park again. I loved Dark Matter, and I get the feeling that every new book from him will become an event. I welcome that possibility into my timeline.





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