Book: Recursive (2019)
Author: Blake Crouch
Summary (4*): What is memory, and what is time, really, and how do they relate to each other? Good sci-fi questions, and this is a thriller about the people that figure it out (sort of), and the strange events that occur. And, like AI or any other super-cutting-edge technology, there are both good and bad effects that this leap in capability brings. A surprisingly engrossing story as it progresses, tightly told in under 400 pages.
Plot (4*): In NYC, a detective comes across a distraught woman that, before committing suicide, talks about memories that sound disconnected from reality, but something more than a hallucination ("False Memory Syndrome" is the label used). In the Bay Area, a researcher fights to develop a method to help Alzheimer's patients capture their own memories before the disease progresses. These two strands, as it turns out, are closely linked; the interesting thing is that, by altering memories, time kind of "comes along for the ride." Turns out that memories and time are closely related, so used differently, the "memory capture" machine also enables creating a new timeline that the world follows. While this might have some great upsides, it turns out that not everyone wants to use this discovery for mankind's common good. I don't want to give much more than that away, as the discovery and progression of the plot was the best thing about the story for me.
Characters (3*): Two primary characters carry the story. Barry Sutton, the NYPD detective, and Helena Smith, the Alzheimer's researcher, are both very well-developed protagonists. I think this is at least partially due to the structure of the novel, where both of them have to "relive" their lives a couple of times in the course of the book. I was kind of shocked how effective the book was in showing the upsides and downsides in being able to correct some of your big mistakes in life. The bad guys are pretty one-dimensional, but ultimately they don't directly drive much of the storytelling. For me, the characters that were connected to the protagonists, and how they reacted to the changing timelines, were fascinating to read and I was asking myself how I'd react in the same situations (spoiler alert: pretty sure I'd act terribly, irrationally, and stupidly).
Re-readability (4*): This book will definitely get re-read at least once, maybe a few years down the road. Really an interesting premise, that seems less far-fetched every day. A word of caution, though: if you can't stand logical inconsistencies in time-travel stories, or if you really need to figure out the pure logic in sci-fi to make sure it's "possible" (whatever that means), you might get wrapped around the axle on this one. Otherwise, well-written enough that it'll still seem pretty fresh the second time through.
Who It's For: Apologies for the mixed media, but if you enjoyed some combo of
Inception, Pink Floyd's
Dark Side Of the Moon, Michael Crichton, and the far reaches of Relativity-based Sci-Fi, you should enjoy reading, interpreting, and turning this book over in your mind.
Post Script: Three more things. One: I enjoyed the way this book approaches "multidimensional travel" (for lack of a better term) even more than the
Inception-type layered dreams: somehow this way feels a little more powerful, sinister, and transformative than that. Even so, Inception was still great, and I exercised the same brain muscles watching it that I used while reading
Recursive. Two: reading it really made me think of physics with a philosophical flavor, but in hindsight, I think of philosophy first, then fit the physics into that. That kind of stuff is in my wheelhouse for thrillers; I just love it. Three: I'm definitely going to read a few more of his novels. Think I will try
Dark Matter next (that one was made into something for TV, but I never saw it).
