Adam Colclough lives and works in the West Midlands, he writes regularly for a number of websites, one day he will get round to writing a book for someone else to review.
What would you do if you could edit out your most troubling memories? All the pain they hold would go with them and a new, happier, life would be possible. That is the offer Nepenthe makes to its customers, for a price. What would you do if you were offered those memories back again? Would letting a cloud dim the sunshine of your spotless mind solve or create a problem?
These are the questions Mei, Oscar, Finn, and William face when they are sent an email offering to reverse their procedure. All have lived with the feeling that something necessary to understanding who they really are is missing. Nepenthe employee Noor has questions of her own, about what her boss is up to and why the company is so keen to undo its work. Finding the answers could cost them everything.
Jo Harkin has taken ideas about how we create and curate our selves through memory and turned them into a suspenseful thriller. One that asks about the extent to which we allow technology to shape our lives and just how much of the truth we can stand to know.
Her writing is scalpel sharp, she has an acute eye for the sterile atmosphere of corporate spaces that could be anywhere and so always feel like outposts of nowhere and the insular currents of small town life. The characters are engagingly flawed, their failings and their search for something that makes sense of things all too human.
This is a clever and original novel that asks questions about memory, identity and the world we make inside our heads.
