“The Memory of Animals” is a suspense thriller in a dystopian (pandemic) setting, which explores the themes of freedom and captivity – including the different types of incarceration that can exist both with locks and without. 

The story is told in first person, from the point of view of Neffy, a volunteer in a trial to develop a vaccine for the pandemic that sweeps the world outside her hospital room. 

In the vaccine ward, only five volunteers (and no staff) remain, hidden from the apocalyptic world outside. It’s an insular, claustrophobic atmosphere, where subtle power plays abound, and there is an increasing sense of secrets kept. 

The main action progresses in a linear way, with the present tense of the narrative voice lending immediacy to the suspenseful dystopian drama. Interspersed within this narrative are flashbacks (engineered through an imaginative plot device) which plunge Neffy into scenes from her past, and enable us to piece together her wider story. 

The main narrative is also broken by letters written by Neffy to a captive octopus which she became close to in her previous job as an aquarist. These start quite whimsical but gain in seriousness as the novel progresses, lending weight to the exploration of the theme of captivity or incarceration. 

My reaction

I found the novel fast paced and a page-turner, finishing it quickly within a day. I enjoyed the imaginative devices used, including the octopus storyline, which at points I found very moving. I also thought the theme was interesting and creatively explored, and the characters were very well imagined. I sometimes struggled with the dystopian setting, simply because the apocalypse was so very bad that the scale of tragedy outside of the main characters made my reading experience feel at times quite bleak, and the small rays of hope felt very small indeed. This can however easily be remedied with something more uplifting for my next read!

Quotes

“From my window, I watch a piece of litter blow slowly from one end of the alley to the other. Its meandering journey is a take of doubling back and indecisiveness, while all the time having no choice but to be pushed forward because the invisible wind says to go back is only an illusion.”

‘The Memory of Animals’, Claire Fuller. p.206.