Dissolution

The year is 2021, the place is London, Margaret Webb is our 83 year-old protagonist, her husband, Stanley, a once brilliant inventor now seemingly has Alzheimer’s and Maggie’s life revolves around visiting him in a memory care facility and hoping for the increasingly rare “good days.” On top of that, her adult daughter has not spoken to her in a year(?)

“It occurs to me that at some point, you pick up your child for the very last time. And you don’t know. At the time, you don’t know that it’s the last time you’ll ever do it.” He was right, of course: Endings don’t announce themselves. They sneak around you; they shuffle their way past unnoticed until, on some cloudy day, you look out on an empty street and realize everything ended some time ago.”

The book starts ‘in media res’: Maggie waking up in the bottom of an indoor swimming pool with an IV in her arm and a strange man standing over her who tells her that, “Stanley isn’t safe. None of us are safe. Something happened, and I need your help to find out exactly what. Think back: When was the first time you saw me?”. The man gives her a pill to improve her memory and the rest of the story is told as flashbacks told to Maggie’s interlocutor who insists he is trying to help keep them safe.

Of course it can’t be that simple, the helpful stranger needs Maggie to go back through Stanley’s memories searching for a solution to unfolding disaster using the central plot device: the “memory spade” device that lets Maggie literally visit and appear within the memories of Stanley. Used incorrectly or too much, though, the memory spade unleashes “the omega”, a cosmic force that erases the “memory”, that is to say the existence of the user (rendering them vegetables) as well, the traveler’s family and friends forget them, as if they never existed.

Much of the story is told through flashbacks that Maggie witnesses using the memory spade. This, of course, means that there several time loops, for example old Maggie witnesses her own wedding to Stanley. Writing these time loops without confusing the reader (and without introducing plot holes) is one of the challenges in time travel stories which this book does superbly.

There’s a ton more to this story but really don’t want to write more than 500 words so let’s just cut to the chase: this is a very twisty thriller about memory, memory loss, true love and (sorta) time travel. The main character is a very likable, self-described, “old-bat” and the villain would be a very comfortable in a James Bond story. The ending manages to be surprising. Time-travel stories are like stage magic in that you have to distract the audience so they don’t notice the sleight of hand. This story performed it’s magic excellently by providing an interesting rationale for the time travel while moving the complicated plot quickly but understandably to a clean, crisp resolution.