The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
The Memory Police is a dystopian science fiction novel by Japanese author Yōko Ogawa. It centers on a novelist living on an isolated island where objects—and people’s memories of them—vanish without explanation. A shadowy organization known as the Memory Police enforces these disappearances, detaining anyone who dares to remember.
The book’s atmosphere is heavy and unsettling, but beyond the intriguing premise, readers in our July 2025 book club found little to admire in the novel. Where some readers found it to be an underdeveloped text with more focus on worldbuilding than storytelling, others recognized some artistic merit in the portrayals of loss and human connections, that were greatly overshadowed by the incoherent messaging.
Comparisons to dystopian classics like George Orwell’s 1984 did not bode well for the novel, and only managed to highlight the book’s perceived shortcomings.
In the end, the book earned a likeability score of just 10%. You can read some of our readers’ full reviews below,
Omar’s Take:
”Quite the fascinating world you've built there. Would be great if something were to actually happen in it!”
Reading this book felt like an endless process of worldbuilding. The whole length of the book is dedicated to demonstrating the dilemma of everyday things becoming "disappeared" and the "Memory Police" enforcing these disappearances. The characters remain trapped in a constant state of reacting and adjusting to these disappearances. Little effort is put into any character development. The characters don't even get names, let alone drive or motivation to meaningfully interact with the world the author is building around them (or more accurately in this case, taking away from them).
Yet after finishing a whole book-length worth of worldbuilding, you're still left confused. You don't understand why things disappear. Nor how. Nor why the titular police force was established. Nor who runs it. Nor why some people seem to be able to remember things after they disappear. Nor why they're a problem. Nor how any of the characters actually feel about any of this.
You're not sure about what kind of symbolism is meant behind all this. If this setting is meant as a commentary on authoritarian government and surveillance, or if it is a criticism of overconsumption? The overcommodification of late stage capitalism? Is it a reflection on a decaying quality of life due to poverty or austerity? Or perhaps a rallying call to action against climate change, as the island gets swallowed by endless snowfall and tsunami? Or against the unstoppable march of technology as people's voices get trapped inside their typewriters?
It's hard to say for sure what this book is trying to say, or if it is trying to say anything at all. If you were looking for a dystopia that uses its world to illuminate some truth about our own, this might not be the book for you.
Hafsa’s Take:
”Between grief and the loss of significance”
The Memory Police is a book that leaves the reader feeling a little hollow after every chapter.
The lack of narrative flow made it hard to stay engaged, and at times I wanted to stop reading. But I kept going—the book strangely makes you want to reach the end.
Something I did appreciate, though, was the story carried within the story in the book, and how it reminded me of the quiet connections and relationships we often forget to value.
Through The Memory Police, the author captures what it might feel like to decay from the inside — a sense of nothingness, a void that is difficult to explain, and not something I would wish anyone to feel.
I wouldn’t recommend this book. It holds sadness in every corner. But if you’re curious to understand the feeling that sits somewhere between grief and the loss of significance— brought on by the gradual disappearance of objects or relationships — this book names it.
Shinoy’s Take:
”Inside you there are two wolves”
The refined and artistic me would need to say that this story is about loss. The loss of memory, the loss of objects and the loss of self, how once these things are lost, people don’t necessarily care about recollecting and remembering them. They adapt to the change and move on. Some people try to hold on but that too tends to be in vain. Honestly, that’s about as much symbolism as I’m willing to grant this book.
But this is what the real me would say about the book,
It is trying too hard to be an epic dystopian novel but with Alzheimer’s and how to cope with it, sprinkled in with a pointless side story of typewriter romance with a hint of Stockholm syndrome. Quite boring. The writing does not engage the readers at all, does not invoke any feeling towards the protagonist or frankly anyone in the story. The author tries to create a mysterious and dystopian Japanese island, but it just does not stick. The ending which culminated in some foot fetish and outright necrophilia did not help. It’s poetic, really—reading a book about disappearing things and wishing this was one of them.
Sri’s Take:
”1984 from Temu? If only!”
This book was sold to me as 1984 on a budget. This is wholly untrue and false advertising. It's actually dystopian Anne Frank from the viewpoint of Miep Gies.
Throughout the whole length of the book, I was trying to give it a fair shot. I did not understand why it was so boring until I realized that the story was told from the perspective of a side character who is nothing more than a pushover. I have never seen such calm from a person literally losing their ability to function. It would have been nice if the author spent a little time researching or even thinking about this.
From the first page of the book to the last, for a book called the memory police, I know exactly 2 things, (1) they erase memories which everyone seems to be adjusting to - like straight up no real reports of protests and no explanation for this and (2) they take people away if they don't forget stuff.
The R character is completely shady. Dudes got a wife and child and then cheats on them with the woman hiding him. Like straight up, wth. And then he leaves her when she loses her organs. Someone described necrophilia and I agree.
Regardless it was an easy read so I read it.