Review by Booklist Review
This novel-in-stories, set in a dystopian future in which memories can be downloaded from one mind to another, asks provocative questions about narrative, humanity, and love. In the years following the War, what remains of the United States is a colony of the totalitarian state of Qin, and Mindbank technology, installed directly into the hippocampus, allows people to virtually experience other people's memories. "What if I told you that some of my most-accessed memories belong in the Criminal Archives?" asks our narrator's dying mother, bequeathing her entire collection of Memory Epics to her terrified, grief-stricken son. Accessing samizdat is risky, and the Censors are ruthless, but who wouldn't pass up the opportunity to know one's mother through the visions of her own mind? The stories that follow, linked in intricate ways, reveal not just the character of the narrator's mother, but entire worlds of connection, meaning, and heartbreak. The premise of Ma's debut novel provides ample opportunity for both metafictional playfulness and deadly serious commentary on our fraught relationship with technology. A previously published short story, "Swimmer of the Yangtze," winner of the Guardian 4th Estate Short Story Prize, forms an elegant centerpiece.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Chinese Canadian writer Ma debuts with a chilling dystopian novel in stories. In the distant future, China has conquered America and renamed itself Qin, after its first emperor, and other people's memories can be bought or sold as entertainment. In a framing device, a man inherits his late mother's collection of memories, which constitute the novel in the form of interconnected stories. The memories are illegal in Qin due to their depictions of interracial relationships and revelations about the government's abuses. "Patience and Virtue and Chess and America" finds a 17-year-old boy named Hao visiting his former private school turned orphanage in the former Washington, D.C., to bring back to Qin a white American girl named Jill with whom he played chess. Hao returns in "After the Bloom" as a watchmaker living in Qin, where he takes a young female writer under his wing during a deadly Covid-like pandemic, which the government takes draconian steps to contain. Throughout, Ma bravely and lucidly portrays how an authoritarian regime seeks to control people's minds, and how people's lives can be commodified by technology. This timely work leaves readers with much to chew on. Agent: Michelle Brower, Trellis Literary Management. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT A dangerous inheritance upends everything a young man knows in Ma's timely and impressive debut. In the future, Qin (formerly China) has become the sole global superpower, and every citizen is fitted with a Mindbank--a device used to record, store, and transfer memories. With the rise of Mindbanks, an economy of second-hand memories has sprung up, carefully moderated by state censors. Memories can also be bequeathed on the owner's death; these are still subject to rigorous government scrutiny. For this reason, the unnamed narrator is shocked to find that his late mother's Mindbank is full of contraband memories; merely possessing them could land him in the Reeducation Camps. Through the frame story of the protagonist uploading and freely sharing the contents of the inherited Mindbank before his inevitable arrest, readers experience the memories as a series of short stories from the perspectives of various Qin citizens and noncitizens, both before and after China became Qin. A number of characters from memories early in the book recur or are referenced as historical figures in later memories, weaving together a larger story of life under totalitarianism. All the while, in his own timeline, the inheritor of the memories reflects on why his mother left him this burden. VERDICT Readers of literary dystopian fiction will find much to enjoy in this thought-provoking debut. Recommended for general purchase.--Jennifer Renken
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