Name: The Memory of Animals
ISBN: 9781953534873

Claire Fuller

From the award-winning author of Our Endless Numbered Days, Swimming Lessons, Bitter Orange, and Unsettled Ground comes a beautiful and searing novel of memory, love, survival--and octopuses.

The Memory of Animals

Brittany Levely-Connolly

"I'm here because I'm only decisive when someone tells I shouldn't do something, and that's idiotic"

What if we could revisit memories as if we were physically, reliving them?
After everything you know and love is gone, would you wish to go back to live it all again?

The Memory of Animals imagines a world in which a global pandemic has occurred and volunteers have signed up to participate in a vaccine trial, but on the first day of the trial a mutation in the virus causes a lethal new variant that swiftly infects and kills the majority of the population through the eyes of Neffy. The narrative follows Neffy's experience living and trying to survive, with the four other remaining volunteers, her letters to an unknown person named H laden with facts about octopuses and reliving memories of the past and those she loves and misses most through the use of a prototype 
created by another volunteer. 

Through the character of Neffy, the narrative poses questions of:
 Who can we trust?
Who we are in real life vs who we think we are?
How do we choose to live?
Can we let go and move on?
In times of crisis how do we act?

As a lover of science fiction post-apocalyptic and dystopian narratives, I was excited when I first saw Claire Fuller's new novel The Memory of Animals was being released, I knew from the synopsis and cover (so what, shoot me and let's be real, it's not as if you're not guilty of doing the same) that this book was going to be on my 2023 must reads list. When I got an advanced e-galley copy from Tin House Publishers through Edelweiss I was beyond excited to being reading and this book did not disappoint me at all. 
I strongly suggest this book for any lovers of the genre, and I found it to be a unique take on the viral trope.