Tell Me an Ending
A New York Times sci-fi book of the year
-
-
3.3 • 3 Ratings
-
-
- £4.99
-
- £4.99
Publisher Description
'Compelling' GUARDIAN
'Incredibly well written . . . I really enjoyed it' MARIAN KEYES
'One of the most sophisticated works of science fiction I've read recently' NEW YORK TIMES
The promise at Nepenthe is simple: they will erase the memories you cannot live with.
After the procedure, psychologist Noor will assess you for two things: your mental wellbeing, and the successful erasure of the memory. But there is no assessment if you choose to delete the memory of the Nepenthe procedure itself. If you do that, you're on your own.
And what if one day, out of the blue, your memory is offered back to you - would you want to remember what you've chosen to forget?
'Extraordinary' EMMA STONEX
'Riveting' KAREN THOMPSON WALKER
'Utterly captivating' LUCY CLARKE
Thought-provoking. I loved it' MARCEL THEROUX
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Harkin wrestles with the ethics of choosing to forget one's past in this richly imagined debut. In an alternate present, medical company Nepenthe has been providing memory deletion services for the past 20 years. Clients classified as "self-informed" are still aware they had a procedure to wipe a recent memory. Those who are "self-confidential" chose to forget they've had the erasure. A class action lawsuit filed by clients plagued by trace memories spurs the company to inform all self-confidentials of their deletion and offer memory restorations. Harkin tells the story from the points of view of a psychologist working for Nepenthe, a college dropout struggling with trace memories, an architect who discovers that his wife was a self-confidential, a young man inexplicably missing years of memories, and a former policeman seeking a memory deletion despite his estranged wife's concerns. The author does a good job imagining the effects of Nepenthe's work while characters weigh questions such as whether or not the self is inherently altered by memory loss. Some arcs feel more emotionally fleshed out than others, but Harkin keeps the plot tight and times her reveals effectively. It adds up to a smart speculative outing.
