The Memory of Animals : Discussion Thread

[Trisha]

In the face of a pandemic, an unprepared world scrambles to escape the mysterious disease’s devastating symptoms: sensory damage, memory loss, death. Neffy, a disgraced and desperately indebted twenty-seven-year-old marine biologist, registers for an experimental vaccine trial in London―perhaps humanity’s last hope for a cure. Though isolated from the chaos outside, she and the other volunteers―Rachel, Leon, Yahiko, and Piper―cannot hide from the mistakes that led them there.

As London descends into chaos outside the hospital windows, Neffy befriends Leon, who before the pandemic had been working on a controversial technology that allows users to revisit their memories. She withdraws into projections of her past―a childhood bisected by divorce; a recent love affair; her obsessive research with octopuses and the one mistake that ended her career. The lines between past, present, and future begin to blur, and Neffy is left with defining questions: Who can she trust? Why can’t she forgive herself? How should she live, if she survives?

The Memory of Animals is an ambitious, deeply imagined work of survival and suspense, grief and hope, consequences and connectedness, that asks what truly defines us―and the lengths we will go to rescue ourselves and those we love.

[Trisha]

through Day 7

(view spoiler)[ wow, this rag tag group of kids doesn't seem capable of keeping themselves together and alive. I'm glad they are rationing food now but they'll need to think long-term plan soon

and yikes, I can't even imagine how scary that must be
but at least some others are immune - that little girl didn't seem sick

memory loss along with weird swelling. this whole pandemic seems horrid. I think I'd want to be like Leon's mom - go at the beginning. Yikes (hide spoiler)]

[Shruti morethanmylupus]

Trisha wrote: "through Day 7.."

full book comment because I just saw this thread :)
(view spoiler)[
Right? But also... the taste and smell thing seems stolen straight from covid. I'm also feeling like so far nothing is really standing out as unique about this book other than the memory machine thing which is cool. The octopus parts are the most interesting to me, honestly. I felt like the book dragged. Not much happened and then there's a rush at the end.
(hide spoiler)]

[Trisha]

ooh, I'll click that spoiler when I'm done!

Day 8 & 9

(view spoiler)[ the stories about her losing her job (maybe) with the tanks and the scientists - what they were doing seems cruel but I'm not sure why she took the job in the first place. If she wanted to save, than that kind of research wasn't the spot for her

the group is breaking down and I'm not 100% sure I see the point of the revisits. Is this just to show the life she had before? to show they are like the zoo animals - locked up and no one let them out? they are like the animals being tested on? Is the revisits like the crab - actually giving them something stimulating. that we'd wither if we didn't have stimulation/a goal? (hide spoiler)]

[Trisha]

11 days

(view spoiler)[ okay, almost done and I'm still pretty confused as to what this book is about. the strive to survive (or surviving despite really trying? apathy?).

I do think it's interesting, Neffy's want to save things and her struggle to not save everyone outside her window. right now she's petrified to do what she needs to do to save everyone else. I wonder why no one else is suiting up/masking up and trying to go out and then quarantine. It's that or starve to death. . .

it was sad Boo visited. I'm glad she got to see that Neffy survived but it was sad, all that she'd forgotten (hide spoiler)]

[Trisha]

and I'm done

I think this is the most passive survival book I've ever read lol
(view spoiler)[ I mean, there was very little fight to survive. for the most part, you are just with Neffy while she goes through her shock and grieves over her dad and her boyfriend and then her mom.

I did like the end and I did find myself unusually drawn to the characters. When she'd found out what they'd done, I felt so betrayed even when I thought I wasn't all that pulled in to the story. It's a quiet one, that very slowly got under my skin. I liked it but yeah, definitely not for everyone (hide spoiler)]