Soupbone Collective

Yoko Ogawa’s “The Memory Police”: An Interactive Review

Phoebe Pan

Are you grateful? Or are you grieving?

Choose all options that apply.

This is a book you will forget.

Y
N
doubt

You left your bookmark on the kitchen counter. Gently, you dog-ear the first page that you fell in love with.

You are grateful for the things that remain.

What you come to learn: the Memory Police are clean and quick as a knife. No one can leave the island. No one recalls the meaning of perfume. You wish it were that easy.

You are grateful for the things now lost. The ribbon, bell, emerald, stamp. Roses. Books. Your mother. Words no more than hollow husks. The absence near poetic.

Birds. Do you still think of birds?

Outside, you walk deep into winter. These are the things you trust: snow, wind, dusk.

This is a book about survival.

Y
N
hold

A birthday party for the old man. Pea soup, salad, sautéed mushrooms, pilaf with chicken, crumbly cake. The spaces between dishes decorated with dried herbs and wildflowers. You listen to the music box, its melody tickling your senses. You know you’re supposed to cry but cannot understand why.

Loss is better company when invited into the body.

In a past, you are told, there were markets with anything that a kid could want: ice cream, popcorn, baked apples, candy, lemon flavoured ramune. You believe this to be true.

It is possible to be grateful for what you cannot remember.

Legs, eventually, then hands. A voice, thin and thick as air blown through a harmonica. There is nothing left to write.

It is possible to be grateful for what you cannot remember.

Legs, eventually, then hands. A voice, thin and thick as air blown through a harmonica. There is nothing left to write.

This is a book about memory.

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