Recursion

Recursion by Blake Crouch (2019 Pan Books 432pp)

Its been quite a while since I last read a novel, no real reason – just been through a phase of reading memoirs, history and little else. I started reading this book a week after starting a new job so my attention and thinking have been a little less than totally focussed on the book. Apologies in advance if you find this review lacking.

Without going into a detailed plot summary, “Recursion” is basically the story of two people. We first encounter Barry, 50-something New York police detective. He’s living an unhappy life after the death of his teenage daughter and the resulting break-up of his marriage. He encounters a suicidal woman suffering from “False Memory Syndrome”, an apparent medical condition that makes its sufferers believe they had led whole different lives up the point that the new memories arrived. Intrigued, Barry starts investigating and begins a crazy adventure.

Helena’s story starts about a decade ago when she was a research scientist investigating the nature of memories and how to capture and possibly replay them. She is driven by the possibility to help her mother who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Given the offer of unlimited funding by a billionaire she leaps at a chance to advance her work beyond her dreams.

Its giving nothing away to say that the two main character’s stories eventually meet and intertwine. Together  they investigate and eventually try to save the world from a unique form of time-travel and its dire fall-out effects. To go into any more detail would ruin quite a few surprises.

Although it touches on some deep philosophical ideas including memory, loss and the meaning of life, the book isn’t heavy-going. Its written as a taut thriller and moves along at quite some pace. There are faint similarities with Ken Grimwood’s classic novel “Replay’ and pushes many of the same buttons but with a techno-thriller edge.

I enjoyed it and would recommend it as a nice diversion that will also make you think.

 

The Blaze of Obscurity

The Blaze of Obscurity – The TV Years/Unreliable Memoirs V by Clive James (2010 Picador  326pp)

Despite being billed as the fifth volume of the author’s “Unreliable Memoirs” (and having that printed on the spine), this is quite a different beast than earlier books. While those at least attempted to cover his life and the feeling of the times, this book is very narrowly focussed on his television work. Covering a period roughly from the mid-1980s to around the year 2000, it’s partly the behind the scenes story of the weekly programmes he made for first ITV then the BBC and then ITV again and mainly about the “Postcard from…” travel shows made over the same time period. While the glimpses behind the façade are sometimes fascinating, I felt it lacked a certain something that the previous memoirs provided. Its almost as if the TV work existed in isolation from the world beyond and its only towards the end when James becomes disillusioned with the task that we learn about changing tastes in society. There are few interesting tangents – learning to drive at a later age, the hassles of being photographed and his friendship with and grief at the death of Princess Diana. Some time after the turn of the century he simply walks away from television and goes back to his earlier life as a writer. He hints at a further volume of memoirs covering things beyond television but as far as I know that never eventuated. Overall entertaining, especially if you have fond memories of watching the TV shows in the 80s and 90s, but could have been so much more.