The Memory of Animals: From the Costa Novel Award-winning author of Unsettled Ground

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A Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Gizmodo, Shondaland, LitHub& Tor.com Best Book of Summer and Good Housekeeping Best Book of 2023 So Far! For anyone who misses the analogy, Fuller spends the rest of the book ramming it home in a series of letters Neffy writes to – wait for it – an octopus, which she looked after in her past life as a marine biologist. Yes, you heard me correctly: ­epistles to a cephalopod. What the point of these missives is, though – other than an opportunity for some pretty purple prose and an excuse to bombard the reader with facts that read like they’ve been cribbed from Wikipedia – I’m not really sure. It looks suspiciously like padding.

Still, in light of the gruesome devastation that fills the city, never mind pressing questions of food and fresh water, it all feels a bit self-indulgent and Fuller’s insights into motive and meaning are too thin. Neffy (Nefeli) decides to volunteer for Vaccine Biopharm on a clinical trial, a sink or swim experiment after exposure to ‘dropsy virus’. This pandemic which is sweeping all before it causes horrific symptoms. The volunteers are literally lab rats but it is a desperate race against time. As the danger outside intensifies, Neffy learns of a device from one of the volunteers via which it’s possible to revisit the past. This well written novel takes us on this journey interspersed with letters Neffy writes to ‘H’ detailing her interest and love of octopus.Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for my proof copy of this book to read and review, all opinions are entirely my own. And what is this “revisiting” technology that Leon has created and how does it play into the story?

Light spoiler in this paragraph* I don’t typically enjoy sci-fi elements in books, I thought Fuller’s use a ‘revisiting’ machine to connect Neffy to the past was clever. It worked to both increase our understanding of Neffy and makes us think about technology, memory, nostalgia and perspective. 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.

Beyond the Book

Claire Fuller is a great writer but The Memory of Animals, her fifth novel, felt to me like two different books mashed into one: on the one hand, a dystopian, pandemic, survivalist thriller about a group of young people on a vaccine trial, and a second book about a marine biologist obsessed with octopuses and her late father. Time travel but not in the usual sense. A story about a pandemic, a very deadly one, where one of the symptoms is a loss of memory. The memory device was an oddly placed piece of the story. I think the story would have been stronger for me if we just had reflections and memories from Neffy as she was going through this hard experience rather than this "memory device." The world is experiencing a pandemic with traumatic symptoms such as memory loss, sensory damage, swelling, and death. The world is in desperate need of a vaccine. Neffy, a disgraced marine biologist, along with her fellow volunteers: Rachel, Leon, Yahiko, and Piper, agree to take part in a vaccine trial. Some will be infected with the virus while others are not. The stakes are high as this might just be the last chance to save the world! The danger and terror are mounting in the outside world as people try to get supplies, gather resources all while falling ill and chaos ensues. I’m delighted to let you know that The Memory of Animals has won an AudioFile Earphones Award for the audio book, narrated by actress Genevieve Gaunt. The award is given to truly exceptional titles that excel in narrative voice and style, characterizations, suitability to audio, and enhancement of the text.

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. No mere survival story, the novel explores the isolation and grief that comes with outliving the people with whom you have unfinished business. In the third narrative strand, Neffy writes a series of letters to “My Dear H” while in quarantine. These tell the story of her career as a marine biologist, and as she describes the lifelong connection she has felt to octopuses, it becomes clear how often she was uncomfortable performing experiments on them or even keeping them (bored and depressed) in captivity. These bits not only point out the irony of her own confinement (and the irony of her having access to a memory machine during a pandemic that erases memory), but will eventually answer the question of where her debt came from.As London descends into chaos outside the hospital windows, Neffy befriends Leon, who before the pandemic had been working on a controversial technology that allows users to revisit their memories. She withdraws into projections of her past—a childhood bisected by divorce, a recent love affair, her obsessive research with octopuses, and the one mistake that ended her career. The lines between past, present, and future begin to blur, and Neffy is left with defining questions: Who can she trust? Why can't she forgive herself? How should she live, if she survives?