Mem - by Bethany C Morrow

About the Book

"Set in the glittering art deco world of a century ago, MEM makes one slight alteration to history: a scientist in Montreal discovers a method allowing people to have their memories extracted from their minds, whole and complete. The Mems exist as mirror-images of their source -- zombie-like creatures destined to experience that singular memory over and over, until they expire in the cavernous Vault where they are kept. And then there is Dolores Extract #1, the first Mem capable of creating her own memories. An ageless beauty shrouded in mystery, she is allowed to live on her own, and create her own existence, until one day she is summoned back to the Vault. What happens next is a gorgeously rendered, heart-breaking novel in the vein of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Debut novelist Bethany Morrow has created an allegory for our own time, exploring profound questions of ownership, and how they relate to identity, memory and history, all in the shadows of Montreal's now forgotten slave trade." ... Amazon.com.

Book Synopsis

"Bethany C. Morrow achieves the nearly impossible feat of creating truly new speculative fiction; reading it feels like discovery." -- BuzzFeed In Jazz Age Montreal, an underground Vault imprisons living memories. Known as Mems, theses physical clones of other people are doomed to experience a single memory over and over--one that belongs not to them, but to the memory's original Source. Lacking thoughts or personality of their own, Mems expire inside the Vault, where they are monitored by scientists known as Bankers. That is, except for one 19-year-old Mem--Dolores Extract n. 1--who shocks the world with the capacity to make her own memories. With the help of the doctor who created her, Dolores is released from captivity and establishes an independent life in the glittering city. She is a beautiful enigma, celebrated by a public obsessed with this dangerous procedure. When she is suddenly summoned back to the Vault, she must confront the Bankers and her own Source to discover the ultimate truth: is she human, or not?

Review Quotes

"Morrow's debut is ambitious and insightful, raising questions about memory, trauma, and humanity. The novel is at its best when it presents Elsie at her most human, forcing the real ones around her to reckon with what her personhood means for theirs." --Publishers Weekly

"With her dizzying concept, richly imagined narrator, ornate setting, and first-rate storytelling, Morrow offers an epiphany for readers of speculative fiction with echoes of ideas explored in films like Blade Runner and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The defiant story of an impossible enigma who only yearns to be a real girl." --Kirkus Reviews

"MEM is a haunting instant classic of the Flowers for Algernon ilk; spare, beautiful, and intensely powerful. This book was unputdownable." --BookRiot

"MEM is a short, satisfying work made poignant by Elsie's voice... Elsie holds up a mirror to her human counterparts, and the reader as well." -The Washington Post

"MEM is an unusual first novel set in an alternate past that brings a powerful vision to bear on the horrors (and opportunities) of trying to establish your own identity in a world that makes no space for you... Morrow drives her premise to a memorable conclusion about who shapes whom in the endless laboratory experiment of being alive." -Los Angeles Times

"A new classic, an extraordinary work of careful craftsmanship and intense compression. Bethany C. Morrow has written a jewel of a book: a tiny object refracting light in all directions." -Locus Magazine

About the Author

A California native, Bethany C. Morrow spent six years living in Montreal, Quebec. Her speculative literary fiction uses a focus on character and language to engage with, comment on and investigate worlds not unlike our own. MEM is her debut novel. She currently resides in upstate New York.