Humans are curious creatures; everyday, we search for answers to questions, trying to understand life. This book tells a story about time, memories, our understanding of reality, and people searching for answers. It tells of a phenomenon called the FALSE MEMORY SYNDROME that leads to a suicide epidemic.
I am not familiar with Blake Crouch or any of his other works; however, after I found out that he was the person who authored the WAYWARD PINES TRILOGY, which was adapted into a television series, I became excited to read this book. I was also thrilled by the fact that this Sci-Fi story is one that doesn’t involve aliens, spaceships and planets.
The story begins with dual timelines of two people — Helena Smith and Barry Sutton. Helena Smith is a neuroscientist who is trying to figure out a way to restore memories in Alzheimer’s patients (I totally love a book with a strong female lead!), and Barry Sutton is a New York City cop whose daughter died some years earlier and happened to witness a woman committing suicide. They both try to figure out what is going on when their paths cross and their stories converge, break apart and reconverge before the final collision.
In the course of Helena’s research, she invents a chair that helps people relive their memories. Enter Marcus Slade who gets his hands on the chair, uses it to preserve memories and then uses these memories to shift reality. I’ll say Marcus Slade is the perfect antagonist in this book. Both Helena and Marcus have some opinions about what time, death and memories really are and this story points out the fact that science goes too far sometimes.
In search of the truth, Barry and Helena discover that the whole memory “thing” keeps causing society to unravel and it is becoming difficult to tell real from false memories. The use of the chair had apocalyptic consequences and both Barry and Helena try to find a way to destroy it. Towards the end of the book, we begin to see a loop, a cycle and repetitions; this explains the title, Recursion, better. I recommend going into this book knowing as little as possible about the story so I’ll stop here.
All in all, I’ll say the story is thought-provoking, fast-paced, twisty, romantic and weird. It is a story with complex and memorable characters. I also liked that the story used a life-like language that I could relate to. I recommend reading this book; it is a great one, and I look forward to reading other Blake Crouch’s novels.
Olayinka Onasanya,
400L, Dentistry.
