Advance Review of Liana Liu's The Memory Key
Release Date: March 3rd, 2015
Synopsis as found on GoodReads.com:
In a five-minutes-into-the-future world, a bereaved daughter must choose between losing memories of her mother to the haze of time and the reality-distorting, visceral pain of complete, perfect recall.
Lora Mint is determined not to forget.
Though her mother’s been dead for five years, Lora struggles to remember every detail about her—most importantly, the specific events that occurred the night she sped off in her car, never to return.
But in a world ravaged by Vergets disease, a viral form of Alzheimer’s, that isn’t easy. Usually Lora is aided by her memory key, a standard-issue chip embedded in her brain that preserves memories just the way a human brain would. Then a minor accident damages Lora’s key, and her memories go haywire. Suddenly Lora remembers a moment from the night of her mother’s disappearance that indicates her death was no accident. Can she trust these formerly forgotten memories? Or is her ability to remember every painful part of her past driving her slowly mad—burying the truth forever?
Lora’s longing for her lost mother and journey to patch up her broken memories is filled with authentic and poignant emotion. Her race to uncover the truth is a twisty ride. In the end, Liana Liu’s story will spark topical conversations about memory and privacy in a world that is reliant on increasingly invasive forms of technology.
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Excerpt from The Memory Key:
Vergets disease, the forgetting sickness, is a degenerative disorder that affects the brain and causes severe memory loss. For the most of history, the illness was endemic in our country, primarily afflicting older people. But sixty years ago, the disease began spreading, and it was no longer just the elderly who suffered; more and more middle-aged were being diagnosed with Vergets, including several members of my family, most on my dad's side but a few on my mom's as well.
The reasons for the epidemic are still unclear. Most scientists blame pollution and genetics. Some believe that lack of exercise and bad diet were contributing factors. A few religious sects declared we were being punished for our heathen ways. A report circulated that an extremist group, the Citizen Army, had poisoned our water supply. Then there are conspiracy theorists who believe our government poisoned our water supply. But most scientists blame pollution and genetics.
Whatever the reason, the whole nation was in crisis (other parts of the world, mostly first world countries, were also affected, though not to the same degree). The workforce was shrinking. The economy deteriorating. The population was afraid and who could blame them? How frightening it must have been to watch their loved ones' brains turn into zombie mush. How terrifying it must have been to wonder if their own brain would be the next to turn traitor.
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Although the story had a very robotic bullet point presentation feel to it at times, I found Liu's take on internal memory hardware intriguing. I did enjoy the overall story, but was never really able to connect with the main character, Lora, due to her style of writing. A lot of times when I read a book I can relate to a character in a lot of ways... and even though Lora & I have some things in common (like the loss of a parent at a young age), I never really found myself sympathizing with her pain.
In The Memory Key, Lora is a recent high school graduate who is still coping with the loss of her mother (her mother Jeanette died six years prior). In this future America, many people have turned to an invention called the Memory Key to solve the growing epidemic of memory loss due to a wide spread disease called Vergets (see above excerpt). Like a natural memory, memories saved on a Memory Key will slowly deteriorate over the years and for Lora, her mother's memories are slowly being lost with time.
When Lora saves a little old lady from being hit by a car, she hits her head on the pavement and damages her Key. All of a sudden, memories she thought she had lost are becoming vivid. She is losing her self little by little into the memories of her mother. This is where she starts seeing things that she saw different at a younger age. When her mother died in the tragic car crash, they were told it was an accident while she was on her way to work. But what she begins to remember speaks of something much more sinister.
As she begins to remember more and more, Lora starts to investigate her mother's death and the company she worked for, which is also the exact same company that holds the patent on the exact device implanted in her head... the exact device implanted in 80% of the populations heads... the Memory Key. But what she finds is something so much more than she thought she would. What will happen if the people she suspects got rid of her mother find out she knows more than she should? Will she be the next to have a tragic accident?
Find out for yourself when you pick up your copy on March 3rd!
I will say, beyond her writing style, I really did enjoy the plot of this story. I kept trying to guess what the outcome was going to be, but was super surprised when the whole story unfolded. I will be excited to see what happens next.
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