Computer is running slow at the moment. I’ve finally gotten a summer job and can get a set schedule going here, break out of my do nothing slump. I’m going to try once again to catch up on my backlog of review books before I get more behind than usual. That said, on to the review.
Aiden Nomura uses his skills as a hacker to open doors, to see how the universe works. His life is game, until a new Therapeutic Forgetting Clinic opens near his boarding school in Bern, Switzerland. With the opening of the new TFC come sudden bombings and the news that Aiden’s cousin Winter has had a mental break down. He returns to the US immediately to help her. But the Hamilton he returns to is far different from the one he remembers. Between a citywide crack down and the growing underground movement, will Aiden be able to rattle the right doors before someone gets hurt?
The Forgetting Curve is a solid sophomore entry in Angie Smibert’s dystopian young adult series. I like that the focus was moved away from Micah and Nora, the main characters of the previous book, but stayed close with Micah’s best friend Winter and another of her friends Velvet. The balance of focus between the three characters feels much better this time around with each character taking different approaches to the mystery of why Winter doesn’t remember anything about Memento. That said, The Forgetting Curve feels a good deal slower than Memento Nora. It digs a good deal more into the characters’ quiet drama, lots of introspective questioning of what’s the truth and what’s just another door that needs opening.
The TFCs were much less of a thing this time around, less of a looming presence in the background, the focus was much more on Nomura’s newest cell phone. The Chipster is the newest part of the new government initiative requiring every citizen of Hamilton to get a microchip implanted at the base of their skull for identification. For their own good of course. I kind of liked the change of focus here, it shows how quickly the problem is growing as people trade freedoms and privacy for perceived safety. This is actually one of the changes that made The Forgetting Curve feel like an improvement over Memento Nora.
I don’t know that The Forgetting Curve is as solid as it could be, there were a number of spots that were a bit slow for my taste. Where it felt like the plot was getting a little bogged down in the details of Hamilton’s politics and the sudden return of Winter’s parents just as she’s had her apparent break down. It was good though and I really look forward to reading the next one. I give The Forgetting Curve a four out of five.
Winter and Velvet? Really? Does Velvet come from district one by any chance? Yeah, I thought so. She must be Cashmere’s long lost sister! Good for them! I have to admit though, I wasn’t too sad to see Cashmere die…
Aside from the distractingly bad names, I was struck by the name of this book. I can’t actually say much about it since it’s book II of a series I haven’t read, but the idea of a clinical setting where people can be made to forget things is intriguing. This sort of medical treatment is still in its infancy, but you might be surprised to find that it does actually exist! There are two ways I know of to erase memories. One is ECT, ElctroConvulsive Therapy, which is used for Depressed patients. We don’t know why ECT works but in extreme cases of Depression, it has been shown to be effective! Basically the patient is strapped down or sedated in order to limit flailing and then a shock of electricity is sent right into their brain. For some reason it works, BUT one of the side effects is memory loss!
For those actually in deep enough Depression to consider the treatment, that is often a small price to pay, but it’s definitely worth noting. In this case the memory loss is short term stuff. You may not remember the treatment or the ECT itself, but of course you’ll remember your name, past, etc.
Now the other form is drug related; altering the chemicals in the brain to inhibit memory storage. One such drug is THC, the active ingredient in Marijuana. You can probably guess why. Marijuana has been shown to significantly decrease the size of the hippocampi in humans. (With long term use or heavy use during the years our brains are developing such as teenage years. ) So it has been hypothesized that THC, in concentrated pills, may be useful in causing the hippocampus (which is crucial in forming new memories) to fail.
There are other drugs that do this, including Special K and Roofies (Rohypnol,) which is why those are often abused by rapists/kidnappers.
It has been said that all behaviors can, in some way, be beneficial to society. Some “scary science” like this, can easily evoke suspicion and negative emotions, but I was tempted to think out of the box and ask myself how memory deletion might be useful to a society. I found that it can! Imagine that!
I’ll use a somewhat personal example. (Eh, I don’t mind sharing) I came from a terribly abusive household. There were times we (me and my siblings) were left alone in our house without food, electricity or running water. Many people don’t think of such things, but you do realize, don’t you, that without running water you cannot even flush the toilette? Well picture that for a moment, a house of 4 children, alone, without the ability to bathe or flush their ONE toilette.
Not a pretty sight, I’ll tell you that much. Other times, we were left without gas, which powered the water heaters and had to bathe in cold water. Cold showers are useful for unwanted erections, but not for underaged children who only wanted to avoid being humilitied by their own body odor at school. If you’re wondering, the lack of utilities was simply due to my parents’ constant quarrelling over money. Dad threatens to not pay the bills, mom challenges, go ahead and voila, the bills don’t get paid and therefore the utilities get shut off. The best part about this situation was the fact that mom would disappear rather than reap what she’d sown and leave us alone to suffer.
Wandering the house by candlelight, living off cold beans from a can, stealing from church to afford basic necessities, I remember doing all of this as a child, and in a well off neighborhood too! The other kids at school got cars for their birthdays. Nice ones. I got zip. My parents were missing in action, as usual. The cars I can forgive. The rotting food in the fridge due to not paying an electric bill? Not so much.
I remember eating raw meat as a kid. We were forbidden from using the stove and left in the house with nothing else. I remember cold water and instant “original flavored” oatmeal. Cereal with water instead of milk. Flies, cockroaches, and rats in our beds and on the table, digging through our food.
And you know what? I wouldn’t mind a zap or two to the head to just delete things like that.
As a child, I believed I deserved to be left without such basic comforts as air conditioning and running water. I faulted myself for my aching, empty stomach because I was told I was a “bad child.” But now I realize the pain had all been avoidable. All due to the carelessness of the bickering children who dared call themselves parents. It is difficult, I must admit, even now to remind myself they’re both mentally ill. That they love me somewhere deep beneath the sickness. To look in their faces now and not spit, thinking that these two left me at home with the flu every winter just to dodge a $20 copay.
More often than not, I find it more difficult than easy to recall things like this. To look back and remember specific instances of abuse. The nights both of them were arrested for domestic assault. And I believe this is because of “mood congruent memory.”
When we are depressed, it is easy to remember things that happened during a depressed time in our lives. But when we are happy, it becomes difficult to remember the bad things, to the point I have to sit down and actually TRY to remember them.
This exacerbates Depression, true, but it also encourages happiness. That, I think, is how I live every day without anyone I know guessing what I’ve been through. It is not purely forgetting, but rather lacking the ability to easily, readily remember.
I would like to say otherwise, but in all honesty, I think I’d be perfectly fine with not being able to remember ANYTHING that happened to me prior to age 18.
So then. Isn’t it strange to consider that a dystopian technology like that might actually be useful? I’m sure the dystopian society in the book used it to hide dirty government secrets or whatever, but I coldn’t help but picture this technology’s use in our own society. For children raped, neglected and abused, it sounds less like dystopia and more like a candy store. I think of PTSD and Depression and I can’t help but wonder if memory deletion might serve some good to us some day.
Perhaps that’s just me. Thinking way too far out of the box.
Velvet is her nickname, kind of like yours is Kagura. Winter I don’t have a defense for.
While I can agree that there are places and situations that being able to forget things would be useful, it also becomes a question of if you’d still be you without your memories. I’m certain that I wouldn’t be the same person I am now if I just up and forgot all the bad stuff.
The TFC relies on the person who is forgetting reciting the memories they want to forget to bring them to the front of their mind to be erased. They get, basically speaking, user reward points like your bank might give you each time they go to forget something. But it’s also that the forgetting clinics and the government work together in this world. In the books’ world the government commits acts of terrorism directed at it’s own people to make them go the the TFCs so that it can control them more easily.
While I’m not surprised that such a thing might exist or that it’s being studied right now I’m not sure how much of a help it would really turn out to be. For abused children, yes, it could help in the short term but what about the long term? What about the abusers who harm their kids and then take them to go forget it all? What happens when someone forgets the wrong things?
Actual events, such as certain nights when terrible things happened are not actually all that necessary. You just need a general gist of “this person treats me badly, therefore I should not trust her,” to protect yourself against abuse.
I tend to find that even though I can’t recall exactly what someone has done to earn their place in my heart, that place tends to stay. I know who to be cautious around, who to avoid, and who I can wear my heart on my sleeves around without the need for recalling all of the specific events that led me to put certain people in certain baskets.
One good thing about this is that I find it easier to forgive if I cannot remember the exact wrongdoing. If the person seeks me out and makes ammends, proving they are willing to change, I am not hindered by past memories and am able to let my walls down with them.
Being that love and human contact is such an important part of my life, this has proven useful. I don’t feel guilty, though, for avoiding people without knowing what particular instance of abuse caused it. Trusting my gut, I guess you could call it.
It is interesting to think of a government which would reward its citizens for forgetting. Pretty extreme, but if you think about it, even people in America are being brainwashed on a daily basis. It doesn’t even require freak science.
You need:
a luxurious Car.
a big home.
To reproduce.
Girls need a thin waist.
Men need big muscles.
Corporations are your friends! They want you to have it your way, eat fresh, and come back for more more more.
Odd update, I got a spam comment that was a word for word quote of an article regarding a Tony Buzan’s forgetting curve research in regards to studying and the rate at which people forget the things they are taught. It seemed worth mentioning.
This review actually drew my attention because the Forgetting Curve is part of Psychology. Ebbinghaus came up with it. The guy dedicated his life to finding out just how much humans retain. Sadly though, we don’t tend to retain much. XD He found that our memory drops off quite rapidly, with most people forgetting about 80% of the information they’ve learned!