The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller
I would like to thank Penguin for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Fig Tree
Published - Out Now
Price – £16.99 hardback £7.99 Kindle eBook
But she isn't here, no one is here. And I have a terror of being alone, in this building, in London, in the world.
Neffy is a young woman running away from grief and guilt, and the one big mistake that has derailed her career. When a debilitating new virus sweeps across the globe, volunteering in a vaccine trial offers her a way to make up for her past. But then, the virus mutates, and the future she had dreamed for herself is gone.
As the London streets outside the medical unit fall silent, and food begins to run out, Neffy must decide where safety lies. Might she find solace by revisiting her own heady memories of the past? Can she trust the strangers trapped inside with her - despite her growing suspicions? Or is her best chance of a future to be found in the terrifyingly unknown world outside?
The end of the world as we know it is surprisingly quite a common theme in science fiction. Its our fascination with the idea of mortality; that one day all of this from books, blogs, family, traffic jams and anything we know could just…stop. What happens then? Eternal silence or something else. In Claire Fuller’s interesting science fiction novel, a group of people taking part in a reckless experiment try to work out what is next when their world ends…but entering a new world is just as scary.
The world is in the grip of a pandemic. A new virus known as Dropsy is quickly infecting people at a rapid rate and mortality rates are high. Neffy has volunteered to trial a potential new vaccine staying in a hospital for the next few weeks. The drug has a powerful impact on her and when Neffy finally awakens there are no staff; the roads are quiet and just a few patients remain. Neffy needs to validate what is the right thing to do and finds an unexpected new technology offers a new perspective on the life now over.
Ultimately this didn’t quite work for me as much as I was hoping for despite a very strong start with a post covid-lens scenes of overworked NHS staff, strange news stories and talk of lockdowns which always will now elicit a powerful reader response and while it’s a different epidemic the scenes do have an emotional response hard to ignore. Then with Neffy asleep while the world ends, we are in the quite familiar territory of Wyndham and even 24 Days Later. Fuller captures a feeling of dislocation and people on the edge of freaking out well. One big theme is Neffy sees a relation between her and her remaining guinea pigs and the animals she saw in science labs as part of a life. Now the experiments need to decide if they should stay or escape.
For me though the story lacks drive after this point. There are lots of tender scenes, character moments via an SF memory device Neffy revisiting past points of her life but it all feels very mannered and emotionally distanced – it also slightly overcooks the plotlines. There is a reason a lot of these tales quickly leave the lab and explore the wider world; and this is more comfortable exploring inner space - which can echo lockdown experiences but its for a novel length tale not quite enough to keep me engaged with the story.
The Memory of Animals is an interesting take on a well-worn idea of genre but doesn’t for me do enough against those stories to make it truly stand out which is disappointing as the experiences of recent years is yet to be fully explored. There is fine writing and some good character works but the essential story is a little overly familiar and so no surprises await seasoned genre fans.
