A number of years ago, I was having a conversation with a coworker about Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. The book had just come out, and thanks to a book subscription I had at the time, I’d read it just before Reese Witherspoon announced that she had chosen it for her book club. This meant that I was, for once, somewhat ahead of the curve on a popular novel. I knew exactly what the furor was about when, suddenly, thanks to Reese, it was on radars of bookish women everywhere, including my office, where I had cultivated a reputation for being a book person.
As this colleague and I were talking, someone in a nearby cubicle overheard us and asked what book we were discussing. When I mentioned the name, this person said she couldn’t remember whether she had read it or not.
I remember thinking to myself at the time, “You haven’t. Otherwise, you would remember it.” Maybe I said that out loud. I’m not sure, to be honest. (More on my poor recall in a minute.) In any case, I couldn’t fathom having read that particular story and it not leaving any sort of impression. I couldn’t fathom not remembering a book I spent any time with at all.
How dare you not remember a book you read!?!
If I close my eyes, I can conjure the feeling of judgmental horror (horrified judgement?) that I felt in the moment. I laugh now, of course, because I also don’t remember every book I’ve read. What lifelong reader possibly could?
Memory is a strange thing. Over the last few years, I have seen my mother’s memory wither away to almost nothing. These days, it fails her on a daily basis, sometimes inside of a single conversation.
I will say something.
She responds as if this is new information.
Then, a few minutes later, she parrots back what I said, having forgotten I said it, as if she knew it all along and is the one telling me.
When I ask her about something from her youth, she spins yarns I’ve heard my whole life in as much detail as I remember. Later, she’ll recall some other long ago memory, except it isn’t from years ago, but from yesterday, or she’ll make something up entirely, offering it with such conviction I want to question my own memories. I can’t pin point when I realized it, but there isn’t anything left for me to gain from our conversations. I talk to her now only to hear her voice, like listening to an old answering machine or voicemail message over and over because doing so offers comfort1.
I wonder whether that slow but unmistakable deterioration of her mind awaits mine. A real life horror story that keeps me up at night sometimes.
It also forces me to reconsider my judgment of my colleague.
Maybe she didn’t like the book enough to make it worth remembering. Maybe she didn’t hate it enough to make her memory of it inescapable. Maybe there just isn’t room left in that shelf in her brain. Like I said, scary stuff if you dwell on it for too long.
I’d like to think that I remember the names of all the books I have read. I couldn’t list them out, but if you asked me about a specific title, I think I could say definitively whether I had read it or not. (OK, I’d probably miss a few.)
Whether I remember what each of them was about is a different question. There are titles out there I recognize as having read, but I couldn’t tell you a single thing about the story or what happens. Some are ones I read in college, when, as an English major, I was forced to go through two dozen books per semester and digested only what was absolutely necessary to write a paper and earn a decent grade. In some cases, that turned out to be very little. Others, from more recent years, I might not remember simply because they didn’t leave much of an impression. This makes sense, I suppose, and feels intentional on my brain’s part. Books I don’t like or didn’t think much of should obviously not be allowed to take root in my mind. Why waste the mental space, am I right? But the emotional response, the dislike, doesn’t always like being forgotten.
In fact, emotions—both positive and negative—seem to be the drivers of what I remember most. There are things that I remember about books I love, in particular, that I hope never to forget.
For example, I remember vividly the moment I finished Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I was sitting on the floor of the empty apartment I had just rented in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the summer before I started graduate school there. I sobbed through the final chapters lying on the cheap, scratchy carpet and can still picture in my mind the moment Sammy sinks onto the couch of his house with Rosa, Joe having finally returned to them. Sammy’s relief at no longer having to serve as surrogate husband and father is described as that of a person lowering themselves into a warm bath. It’s so specific and relatable. Sad, too. The scene still compels me to take a moment’s reflection whenever it comes to mind.
Let me pause to admit here and now, dear reader, that the clarity of this memory notwithstanding, I had to go back and look up Sammy’s first name just now. I did remember he was the Clay of the story.
Here’s another example: I remember the words Cross came back to me as if the figurative punch they packed knocked the wind out of me just yesterday. The burst of how-is-she-getting-into-my-head recognition of what it is to be a teenager and not being sure whether you want to tell the world the boy you like wants you or tell absolutely no one because what a marvelous secret to get to keep. I didn’t want to like Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld, mostly because as I absorbed every word, I was absorbed by the notion that I wished I had written it. I remember its characters as if I just met them because they all seemed conjured from my own memories of high school—some that I treasure but also some that I would happily never think about again.
I could go on, but this post can only be so long.
My mom never read much fiction. The few books in the various apartments and houses we lived in just the two of us tended to be self-help books or texts from the classes she was talking at the time2. She’s a people person, through and through, so I imagine that if she’s “lost in her memories,” like Alzheimer’s patients are often described, she’s revisiting the moments in which she’s chattering away to a friend or family member. When I talk to her, what she brings up the most—other than how much she loves her grandkids—is not just the people she loves, but the conversations she just had with them.
I just talked to him. Did I tell you? He’s fine, but he doesn’t take care of himself.
She didn’t just talk to him, but the idea of it, the memories of countless conversations with family on the phone is as good a place for her to be lost in as any.
As I get older, my memory works less well than it used to. In those moments, just after that song title or celebrity name or that thing someone at work told me yesterday pops in my head after a little too long, I wonder what places I’ll go get lost in. How I think about books I’ve read feels different too.
It takes more now for me to remember a book, its plot points and memorable lines and favorite characters. There really is a lot less room up there in my mind palace than there used to be, I guess. Books that I love are fewer and farther between, and even those don’t always stick with me. I have found useful to track what I read on apps not just because it’s fun, but precisely because I can’t always keep track mentally.
In looking through the last few years, here are some that I had to remind myself about:
How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin
What I remember: Hops back and forth in time, and in the past, three friends go to a fortune teller or something and one is told when she’ll die . . . I think? But it’s late in life and she married a rich guy in the village. In the present her niece or grandniece is the one trying to solve it. The stakes include the need to keep the aunt’s old estate from developers. Or something.
What I said at the time I read it: I picked this up at a book store because the premise was intriguing, but the most that I can muster is the worst that may be said about a murder mystery: it was boring. The pacing was too uneven to make this a page-turner and the characterization was so thin, by the end, I didn’t care who did it or why.
Back After This and Evvie Drake Starts Over, both by Linda Holmes
What I remember: In the first, the female protagonist is a podcaster, and in the second, the male protagonist is a Major League Baseball pitcher with the yips.
What I said at the time I read it: I didn’t bother to review either of these, but I gave both three stars. Serviceable romance novels, but now I just want to listen to a podcast about the yips.
Sink: A Memoir by Joseph Earl Thomas
What I remember: A lot of poverty.
What I said at the time I read it: I didn’t even bother giving it a rating, let alone a review.
Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho
What I remember: I liked this one—I love any book about female friendships. I think one of them goes away to college and one of them stays in Los Angeles. There’s a scene in which one is riding in a car with a guy that I remember thinking was realistic. That’s all I got.
What I said at the time I read it: This story about best friends growing up, apart and back together is quick and affecting. The author weaves together the journeys of two Taiwanese women through time jumps that reflect the absences through which their friendship perseveres but that take some steam out of the story, particularly at the end. The book follows what seems to be a common trend of labeling as novels what could also be called a collection short stories, loosely connected. I particularly enjoyed Ho’s attention to detail and the care with which she explores how Jane and Fiona’s respective relationships with their mothers shape their experiences and their relationship, which features a relatable (if not always likable) push and pull that only people who have seen one another’s worst and best can manage.
The Perfume Thief by Timothy Schaffert
What I remember: Nothing. (I think Josephine Baker is a character, but that could very well have been wishful thinking on my part as I read the novel and somehow turned into an incepted memory of the book.)
What I said at the time I read it: I struggled with how to rate this one because it wasn’t poorly written, and if you’re into World War 2 historical fiction, then this might be for you. My reaction is based entirely on high expectations from an enticing premise: a queer woman in Paris at the height of the Nazi occupation must find and secure a book of formulas by a famous perfumer before it falls into German hands. Sounds great, right? But the execution doesn’t quite follow through. Schaffert did his research and is a solid writer, but in the end, I couldn’t get into the narrative or connect with any of the characters, and the plot sputters along until a ho-hum conclusion in which very little happens. Not bad, per se, just boring.
The People We Hate at the Wedding by Grant Ginder
What I remember: I was drawn entirely by the title. I think this was one of those that was OK throughout, but finished strong, and I love that in a book. A brother goes to his sister’s wedding expecting to hate everything about it because she’s marrying rich? (Almost. After reading the description again, it’s a brother and a sister going to the wedding of their half-sister, by way of their mom, and she is already rich because of her dad. So I was close-ish, I guess.)
What I said at the time I read it: A funny take on selfish, bitter people made so by loss and the petty rivalries of sibling-hood. Not for everyone because not everyone can enjoy a book full of characters they don’t like, but some of the peevishness veers into the kind of ridiculous you can laugh at. If you’re into that like I am, it’s a sharp, quick read.
Flores and Miss Paula by Melissa Rivero
What I remember: That I didn’t like it.
What I said that the time I read it: A Peruvian mother and daughter in New York living in the shadow of their grief over their husband/father. What’s not to like? The fact that half of it is about a weird take-over plot at the start-up the daughter works for that sells aquariums. I didn’t understand it or how it was meant to relate to the mother’s much more interesting story, one of grief and growth and friendships that get us through difficult times but also aren’t good for us. Rivero is a good writer, but the dots didn’t quite connect for me.
And finally, one that I do remember, a book about memory itself: Memory Piece by Lisa Ko
What I remember: A childhood like the one I remember, performance art in New York City in the 90s and an imagined future that feels all too real.
What I said at the time I read it: I picked this up without reading about it because I love Ko's previous work, The Leavers. The story of three childhood friends, how the grow up and evolve through their varying interests and the changing world around them is an interesting look at friendship and self-discovery that—for me, at least—takes a bit of discombobulating turn in the last third of the book when the story jumps into a future in which the forces very much functioning to curb our humanity today reach an imagined future that is extreme in its interpretation of today's current environment, though (frighteningly) not entirely out of the realm of possibility.
There is no shift in tone, per se, but suddenly what felt whispered in previous chapters regarding the author's intent is loud and clear. Memory Piece is as much about what, how and who we remember as it is about how we choose to remember ourselves and what feels worthy of memory—and the idea that the very act of remembering is resistance. Once again, Ko has drawn characters that are fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. I don't know whether my own memories of the 90s and the spans of time she covers in the first two-thirds of the book grounded so much of the storytelling that the rest felt like too sudden a departure, but it wasn't until the very end where it all started to make some sense. Ko is quickly becoming a favorite writer of mine. And if I didn't give this one five starts, it's only because I feel like there is still more and better to come.
All the women in my family recently watched the Netflix movie Voicemails for Isabelle and were all in tatters about it, so I have the idea of listening to an old message on the brain. Still, the metaphor fits.
Mom completed a bachelor’s in business administration over the course of my late childhood, starting when I was 10 or so and officially graduating when I was a junior in high school.
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