Recursion

Um, amazing?! How is this the first book I am reading by this author? Blake Crouch sucks you into a world where memory isn’t set in stone and what you’re sure of may not be truth. A wonderful sci-fi set in an alternate reality.

Scientist Helena sets out to build a machine to help patients with Alzheimer’s (great current day connection), but soon her project sponsor has the plan turning sinister with human experimentation, trials that amount to torture, and results beyond what they had anticipated… or what she had anticipated. The way the author slowly unfolds this story is masterful. An amazing read.

Our other main player, Barry, is a cop, investigating one of the cases the CDC is now tracking where patients claim memories of show more an alternate life flood their mind and are so real they haunt them. How could you not mourn for a child you loved who no longer exists in your “current” timeline? For a husband who claims not to know you? So many great questions, and the rabbit hole just gets deeper and deeper. Lots of twists! Blake Crouch is definitely on my must-read list from here on out!

Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader. show less

Recursion is a fast-paced science fiction thriller that’s absolutely mind-boggling. It makes the concepts of multiple timelines, reshaping the past, and altering memories seem factual and credible. It even slips in a little philosophizing about the very nature of reality including the role memory plays in it. And at the same time, it tells an emotionally moving story. I found myself getting so caught up in the characters, their families and the different ways they experience - and sometimes lose - their lives it was hard to let some go. I had my doubts this could be as good as Dark Matter but, if anything, it’s even better.

I feel (and probably sound) like a broken record but it just keeps happening again and again. This new generation of writers cannot write. They have no clue how to create compelling characters, no clue how to hook the readers into the story and make them want to find out what happens next. The two main characters, a cop who lost his daughter and a female scientist whose mother suffers from Alzheimer's, are completely bland. I had no feeling for them, no connection to them, didn't care about them at all.

Nor did I care about the development of the magical memory chair. And that's what it is. Like Peter Clines in The Fold, the author has a "cool" idea but is too lazy to try to explain, even in a fictional way, how it might work. It just show more does.

The writing is very pedestrian, simple. There are a lot of one-line paragraphs, because Bland Couch doesn't think you can handle too many words in a row without a break. And it's written in the present tense, which is something authors do when they don't have anything interesting to say but want to sound arty doing it.

Female scientist talks like a teenager, because snarky teenager is the default voice for everyone in fiction nowadays, because that is the stage of development in which these authors are stuck.

Then there are the errors and downright clunky bits an editor should have caught, like the author applying light years incorrectly.

And this bit:

In high school, in college, she was encouraged again and again to find her passion--a reason to get out of bed and breathe. In her experience, few people ever found that raison d'etre.

Wow Bland you know French! I'm so impressed that you know the term for something you already said twice.

I had to quit this 100 pages in (end of Part One).

Update: We had our book club discussion last night and I was stunned to find that everyone else in the group (and it was a full group) loved it. I think they were sufficiently fascinated by the ideas that other aspects weren't as important to them. We did have an interesting conversation about memory and the question of if you could go back and change a decision you regretted, being aware of the ripple effect and that others might start to remember the other time-line, would you?

One person said that science wasn't necessary because the plot carried it along and "it's not that kind of story." I completely disagree. If you're writing a novel where science and technology are central, you need to explore that science. Otherwise write a fantasy novel and say a wizard did it, if you are just going to make up arbitrary rules to make the story go where you want it to go.

There are interesting concepts in this book; it's just that Crouch utterly failed at utilizing them. In the hands of a proper writer it could have really been something. show less

What a fantastic book. In the beginning we're introduced to Barry Sutton, an NYC cop following up on a suicide connected to False Memory Syndrome (FMS) – an apparent disease whose sufferers remember entire chunks of time transpiring differently from how they actually did. Shortly afterwards, we meet Helena Smith, a neuroscientist working on a project to develop a "memory chair", which can reinvigorate and strengthen memories, motivated by trying to stop her mother continuing down an Alzeimer's related spiral. It doesn't take too long for these storylines to cross and the result is gripping.

OK, so the science isn't exactly plausible, but as someone who grew up on Doctor Who that doesn't bother me. More important is the strong emotional show more foundation of the storyline: Barry's and Helena's love for their families, their desperation and grief… the villain isn't quite as strong, one of those capitalists motivated by "well the technology is probably good, and besides that it's going to make me lots of money!" but Barry's and Helena's efforts to thwart him had me clicking through pages in a frenzy. For how much I was moved by their personal stories and how unputdownable I found this book, it deserves nothing less than five stars. show less

Around the world, people have begun falling victim to a new, unexplained phenomenon which manifests as a sudden recall of false memories so disturbing that many sufferers ultimately commit suicide. Barry, a police investigator, becomes personally embroiled in the mystery when during his probing discovers that False Memory Syndrome is actually a lab-manufactured affliction. Captured by the architects of FMS, he is sent back to the night of his daughter's tragic death, where (when?) he is given an opportunity to change history.

A delightful, super-entertaining thriller — not what I typically read, but it proved to be the sort of book I'm reluctant to put down even when it's time to go to bed or feed myself. The challenge of tracking show more multiple timelines had me periodically scratching my head, and Crouch kept me guessing about how the story could possibly resolve satisfactorily. It does...I think...though the nuclear bomb scenes gave me actual nightmares (a first). show less

I was one of many who read and loved Dark Matter and so I went into this one with high hopes. For me, it did not disappoint. The premise is that people around the world are experiencing False Memory Syndrome (FMS) and no one knows the cause or cure. They are hit with a wave of “dead” memories in black and white of alternate lives.

Barry Sutton is an NYC cop grieving the death of his daughter and breakup of his marriage. Helena is a brilliant scientist who is whisked off to a remote oil rig by billionaire Marcus Slade for a secret project. As the story unfolds there are so many complications and unexpected jaunts that at times I felt like my brain was melting. I loved the twists and the fact that despite being very plot driven, I show more still cared deeply about the characters and their relationships.

Though the story is clearly focused on the crazy world of FMS, it also offers quiet meditations on grief, power, love, and more. I loved it and I know that I’ll reread it with a whole new perspective next time.

“And it hits him all over again – the ruinous power of grief.”

“She realizes that children are always too young and self-absorbed to really see their parents in the prime of their lives.”

“Perhaps memory is fundamental, the thing from which time emerges.”

“That’s what it is to be human – the beauty and the pain, each meaningless without the other.” show less

Reread in 2021 on audio. Just as beautiful, and a lot less complicated than I remembered it.

"I want to breathe the same air as you every minute of every day of my life no matter how many timelines I live. That's why I found you in the first place."
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Update: I have tried to tell people on two different occasions that this book is by Barty Crouch. Sigh.

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THIS BOOK. This is my second favourite book read in 2019 so far (my first favourite is a topic to come in 2020, so we'll deal with that then.) But this book! THIS BOOK! Ohmygosh. I read the description and was highly intrigued but I didn't expect it to warp my brain quite so much. My brain is a different being having read this book.

I have never been more glad of train delays. Normally my show more morning commute is seamless, but thankfully, today I ended up stuck in a tunnel which is good because otherwise I would have been sitting at work finishing this because it was so very readable and so mind boggling and so curious. I have an issue with tending to completely race through books, but with this one, I had to pause and think, because Crouch brought in so many topics for contemplation. But I also had to finish it as it was gorgeously pacy.

There is a subtle love story (my favourite kind), and there is a lot of maturity in the discussion of what makes a couple work and what makes them drift apart, and whether that's a bad thing (spoiler alert: it's not.) I appreciated the relationships in this book so much. The nuances of the parent child relationships especially were incredibly touching and powerful. I just want to take the big relationship here and squeeze them a bit and cry with them and love with them. "You look like someone who might want to buy me a drink." "My soul knows your soul. In any time." My heart. I forgot I had one.

And Helena! Helena! Helena, my love, how you evolved! Once you've lived a certain amount of years, you're significantly different to who you once were, and this book does such a great job of capturing that sentiment and exploring it--how you're the same, but different.

THIS ENTIRE CONCEPT. And the title. Oh, how I love the title (hello I was a computer science minor and data structures was one of my favourite college classes and recursion is endlessly fascinating.) The title actually helped me to comprehend what was happening, and though I will never fully understand, the author did such a good job of explaining it in a way that was just detailed enough to be believable. To the extent that I was indeed questioning the space-time continuum as I sat on that train this morning, as I sat at a show last night, as I pretended to pay attention to the nice pair conversing with me. Was that conversation really happening? Would I remember it enough to have 120 synapses fire? What aspects was I paying attention to? So many thoughts that this provoked.

And the ending worked. Endings never work in books like this, but this wasn't too shabby. It made sense, and while I want to know more nuances of what happened as an epilogue to the epilogue (how annoyed I was to read the word "epilogue"!) logically it made sense following the timeline that had already happened. And when I figured out, slightly earlier, how it was going to happen, man. Oh man. That just changed everything, too.

I hadn't realised until before writing this review that Crouch also wrote DARK MATTER which I wasn't actually a super big fan of, but I did adore the concept, so now I'm so terribly excited to see what world he dreams up next. And maybe dive into backlist. Once I get through this pile of library books. (Ha!)

So excited to tell everyone I know about this book (though I'm going to have to refine my pitch a bit here before I become known as the crazy memory girl.) show less