Someone from my IRL book club recommended this book (highly recommended this book, in fact) and despite the fact that I haven’t really read Sci-Fi recently, I decided to give it a go. And wow, this is such a beautifully written book!

Recursion is a story about the power of memory. One day, something called “False Memory Syndrome” starts to appear – people have memories of lives that they haven’t lived and that is something deeply unstabilising. When NYC cop Barry Sutton has someone commit suicide in front of him because of her false memories, he’s shaken to the core. But not as shaken as he will be when he meets scientist Helena and uncovers the secret behind False Memory Syndrome, and that something involves time travel (of a sort).

The story is pretty evenly divided between Helena and Barry, but I can’t really speak much about Helena’s part without starting to spoil the story. Both characters are interesting, but as always, I don’t quite get the romance that occurs in the book. Luckily, that’s not a big problem, just something I noticed halfway through and never felt very convinced by.

What I was convinced by, however, is Crouch’s description of the importance of memories. Memory grounds us and helps to shape our identity – if we were to forget our past, we would be forgetting key moments that make up our personality. I had absolutely no problem believing in the possibilities that Crouch paints, and his world where memory is no longer stable is truly a terrifying one.

As for the plot of this book, it flows like water. Despite the fact that the book is written in the present tense, which tends to make me very conscious of the prose, I was quickly absorbed into the story and was quite sad to have to put it down for a week because I forgot my kobo. The story does get rather confusing towards the end, as memory melds into memory and I wasn’t quite sure what was happening. But, I managed to somewhat grasp the ending and that was satisfying enough. I suppose asking for a neat ending for such a slippery book is a bit too much, but I really would like to understand what was going on.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book! It’s a beautifully written story and I love how it plays with the possibilities of the past, present, and memory.

P.s. if you’re interested in memories as a concept in books, check out:

• The Art of Making Memories by Meik Wiking for a non-fiction book on how to make more memories to treasure (my review)
• I Killed Zoe Spade by Kit Frick for a very different type of mystery where our narrator has to deal with her unreliable memories (my review)