She Treads Softly: The Memory Collectors

Thursday, May 1, 2025

The Memory Collectors

The Memory Collectors by Dete Meserve
5/20/25; 336 pages
Crooked Lane Books

The Memory Collectors by Dete Meserve is a very highly recommended speculative mystery with science fiction undertones in which four strangers all travel back to the same day in their past, a day that changed all of their lives. This is a compelling, un-put-downable novel.

In 2028 Aeon Expeditions, a time travel invention of Mark Saunders, allows clients the chance to spend an hour in their past. Four people in Ventura, California, have all been among the lucky applicants chosen to revisit a random day in their past. Elizabeth would love to spend one more hour with her son, Sam, who died in a senseless accident. Andy wants to find his first love who ghosted him after a whirlwind romance. Logan desires to experience the active lifestyle he had before an accident left him in a wheelchair. Brooke is looking for an hour of relief from the guilt of an unforgivable mistake.

Unknown to them before their trip to the past, they are all going to return before August 25, 2025, a day that changed all of their lives forever. When they don't return to the present after an hour, the four find themselves stranded in the past for five days and their paths eventually cross. Their visit can't alter the past or the future, but perhaps it can change how they view it.

The Memory Collectors is an exceptionally well-written, original, compelling, and fast-paced genre-bending narrative. Although the premise, traveling back in time, is a staple in science fiction, in this case it is simple the literary device used to propel forward and explore much deeper themes in the character-driven novel. These themes cover a myriad of topics, including loss, guilt, bitterness, second chances, hope, grief, forgiveness, closure, and redemption.

Chapters alternate between the points-of-view of the four characters and their experiences. The characters come to life and are all portrayed as fully realized, sympathetic individuals with both strengths and weaknesses. What they end up having to face as they all head for the date is unexpected and unpredictable, but ultimately it does result in closure.

Pick up The Memory Collectors if you enjoy character driven mysteries. Thanks to Crooked Lane Books for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.