The Memory Police, by Yōko Ogawa

  In The Memory Police Yōko Ogawa describes a small Japanese island ruled by "the memory police", an organization with apparent total power and no opposition whose entire purpose is to make sure the things that "are disappeared" are physically destroyed and arrest anyone on the island who is able to remember them. A very interesting metaphor on the things that only hold value if we remember and fight for them.

  Unfortunately, in this book no one fights for anything! I expected some sort of revelation on how this magical police can make disappear concepts from the minds of people so thoroughly that they can't even put them back in their memory when holding them in their hands. Or some sort of solution to said problem. Some sort of misguided attempt at a revolution. Something! But these are Japanese people, if things are supposed to disappear, they go with it until they are all gone.

  Was the author trying to convey the same frustration that I felt while reading the book? People so ritualistic and conformist that they basically amount to non playing characters, running the same routine until someone turns the game off? Because this frustration only combined with the ethereal quality of internal monologues who noticed things happening and ... then did nothing at all.

  I can't say the book was not decently written and the idea was intriguing, but if you expect the story to go anywhere, well, it doesn't.