Explanations about the machine’s purpose and process take up valuable space that could have been spent in-scene, where Fuller’s admirable descriptive powers are to the fore: “Marmari beach was a narrow oyster-coloured scoop, the olive trees so close to the water that in the late afternoon their shadows dipped their heads into the sea. Claire Fuller’s The Memory of Animals is an ambitious, deeply imagined work of survival and suspense, grief and hope, consequences and connectedness that asks what truly defines usand to what lengths we will go to rescue ourselves and those we love. While original in premise, this device soon begins to irk: why couldn’t the character just remember the past like most other fictional characters, which is to say, in her own head. The English author’s fifth novel is a taut and atmospheric read As much of the narrative takes place within the confines of the hospital – with depressingly realistic details such as Neffy’s inability to taste and smell, or “the internal mixture of lethargy, irritability and sudden zeal” brought on by captivity.Īs much of the narrative takes place within the confines of the hospital – with depressingly realistic details such as Neffy’s inability to taste and smell, or “the internal mixture of lethargy, irritability and sudden zeal” brought on by captivity – Fuller chooses to bolster this with a science fiction storyline about a “Revisit” machine that allows Neffy to travel back in time in her memories, chiefly to childhood holidays in Greece with her father Baba.
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