User Profile

Elise

throatmuppet@ramblingreaders.org

Joined 1 year, 2 months ago

She/Her. 20s. Trying to get back into reading after falling off when I was younger. I think I like queer romance, manga (mostly seinen and yuri) and SF/F, as well as some non-fiction about topics close to my heart like dance music, videogames, drugs and computers. My main fedi is currently @throatmuppet@xyzzy.link.

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Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder, 小川洋子: The Memory Police (Paperback, 2020, Penguin Random House) 4 stars

**2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

A haunting Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance, …

Moody, Evocative

4 stars

It wasn't for me, but I'm still glad I read it. Ogawa's greyscale, slowly grinding dystopia gives the mind's eye a view of a world where epistemic injustice is extremely unsubtle, and still the people oppressed are unable to give voice to this, in fact directly because of it. The mechanics of the world don't quite make sense -maybe something lost in translation- but once you move past the small things that you think need answers and look at the bigger picture, things begin to take shape. Interesting questions about the setting and happenings of the narrative are left unanswered intentionally, and left as exercises to the reader. I was reminded throughout my reading of Yokohama Kaidashi Kiko- that being a 90s reaction to climate change and this a piece of dystopic literature, but the comparison seems apt to me because of the slow creep of impending doom. The eponymous …