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This book is one that I have no idea how to classify. It is a genre-bending thought-provoking masterpiece. It was originally published in 1994 then translated to English in 2019. When I looked up material about it, described it under Stanford professor and critic Ramon Saldivar's definition of speculative realism, "literature that deploys the fantastic in the process of turning away from latent forms of daydream, delusion and denial, toward the manifold surface features of history."

Part allegory, part fable, part dystopian drama, The Memory Police is a timeless story about an unnamed island under Orwellian surveillance. On this island, random objects are "disappeared". Roses, calendars, emeralds, perfume. The object is disappeared by sending a kind of compulsion to destroy upon the inhabitants.

“The island is run by men who are determined to see things disappear. From their point of view, anything that fails to vanish when they say it should is inconceivable. So they force it to disappear with their own hands.��

Then they forget the object. And finally, they forget that they had forgotten the object. "Order" is seen to by a fascist police force. The first duty of the Memory Police was to enforce the disappearances.

The second most striking thing I found in this novel was the lack of urgency to escape or "fight the man". Our narrator, a novelist currently working on a book with as harrowing subject matter as her story, is in no rush to escape. After the death of her parents, the disappearance of things she and her dearest friend, the Old Man, hold dear she just carries on living. The innate strength to be found in not losing your spirit at the hands of such a fascist state is almost admirable.

When her editor, R, reveals that he can still remember things, the narrator and the Old Man plot to hide him in a hidden room at the narrator's house. It is here that the book evokes memories of The Diary of Anne Frank.

As the story progresses, we also follow the narrator's procession of her novel about a typist who loses her voice and is trapped in a "castle tower" by her captor, her typing instructor. In this we can see the narrator explore her fate on the island. Her typist loses her voice, her ability to type, her hearing except only to hear the voice of her captor. Trapped in a hopeless state where the instructor pulls and prods, treating her like a marionette whose strings only he can control. This, along with the novel's lack of urgency and sublime voice, were quite jarring.

Nothing moved in this little tableau—no wind, no sign of life—with the sole exception of my breath, which labored quietly in the cold. Everything that had lost its purpose seemed to have been gathered together right here.

The book also contains a lot of heart and a lot of punch. There seemed to be a complacency, a benign acceptance of the fate of the island's inhabitants,

Silence fell around us all, as though we were steeling ourselves for the next disappearance, which would no doubt come—perhaps even tomorrow. So it was that evening came to the island.

At one point, R and the narrator are discussing how it feels for her to lose a memory,

My memories don’t feel as though they’ve been pulled up by the root. Even if they fade, something remains. Like tiny seeds that might germinate again if the rain falls. And even if a memory disappears completely, the heart retains something. A slight tremor or pain, some bit of joy, a tear.

It made me wonder why they didn't fight back. Why didn't they try to orchestrate escape from the island? The Memory Police even destroyed the ferry and maps after a successful attempt to escape by unknown characters. So why didn't the narrator and her friends conspire to save their humanity? Perhaps overthrow The Memory Police?

However, when I realised I was trying to make a Hunger Games out of a much more complicated book, I concluded that the spirit of revolution here is in the characters' innate kindness. This is wherein I observed the importance of the book lay. Small acts of kindness are sprinkled all across the book, coming almost instinctively to the characters. There was also spirit in hopelessness. Mining joy, purpose from the bleakness of being. Life here is conducted purposefully. There is rebellion in continuing to live. Of remaining tethered to your world yet refusing puppetry to the whims of a malevolent destiny.

In R's memories, they are able to create stories, joy, luck, warmth, feeling. When the island is overrun with winter, the narrator does her best to make sure her two friends are still well fed and well clothed. On one of the old man's birthdays, R gifts him a music box, a disappeared item. A memento that the Old Man holds on to. Constantly praising what a meaningful gift it is. Not because it's a preserved disappeared item but because R had saved it and decided to give it to him. Theirs was to love and be loved. For what else was there to do on the island.

As an existential nihilist, this book's surrealism delivered the requisite amount of existential dread. When R moved into the narrator's floorboards, he barely made any noise or took much space.

No matter how hard I listened, there was never any sign of someone living under the floor, and yet this silence made me all the more conscious of his existence.

I'm not one to debate the sureties of out of sight out of mind, but is it just possible that when you meet people, and you leave an impression, that negative space is what affirms your existence? Are your actions' indentations on life's fabrics such that when you're gone, the memory of you will be your legacy?

This book had me in knots. It's a kind of guide when experiencing secondhand the pain of others. Important things remain important things, no matter how much the world changes. It holds your hand, shrouding its pain through allegory for you not to be desensitized by the brutality of the state. It allows you to see that personified good can sprout even in the harshest of environments. Like lavender in gravel. This book made me cry. And left me with a chasm in my heart due to that ending. But it's one of the most impactful books I've ever had the privilege of reading.