’Memory Piece’ review: An exploration of friendship, memory, and time

After her critically acclaimed exploration of belonging, borders, and the relationship between a mother and a son in The Leavers, Lisa Ko returns with her second novel, Memory Piece. Published by Riverhead Books on March 19th, the book is an ambitious interconnected anthology that meditates on the nature of human connection through the relationship of three friends who cross paths on the East Coast. However, the novel is much more than the sum of its parts. Through its layered characters and masterfully crafted depiction of the evolution of New York City, it also manages to comment on gender, economics, family, art, and the purpose of human life. Achieving this is quite a feat and, while not without flaw, makes it a fascinating read to further appreciate the nuance of contemporary society.

Memory Piece is an “interconnected anthology.” The book presents a story split into three parts focusing on the lives of three different women, Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong, and Ellen Ng. The three first encounter each other in a Chinese school as they begin traversing middle school and remain, after ups and downs, in each other’s orbits while the world that surrounds them undergoes a drastic transformation that changes them along the way. This fascinating format allows for a 360-view of friendship and interpersonal relationships that constantly reminds readers that every person is a world and that there are many internal battles hiding beneath the surface, whether it is the collapse of the Dot Com bubble, the challenges of being an activist, or the quest to build a name in New York’s art world.

A character study on memory.

Ko’s meticulous prose and varying style, which fluctuates between streams of consciousness and unreliable narrators, builds a unique voice for each character that is quite realistic and that allows them to have vastly different relationships with time and memory, the underlying motive that surrounds the myriad of themes of the book. Giselle, for instance, sees the world as excerpts that resemble journal entries laced with a relentless passion to make them art performances that go from journaling memories to hiding away in a mall. Jackie notices small details around her and collects others’ memories through a software that evokes early social media, while Ellen is aware of the danger they might pose and the way nostalgia gets in the way of the future. 

Parts of what makes the characters so effective is that they are not reduced to their own identities. While the Asian-American experience was a key topic in The Leavers and remains prevalent all throughout Memory Piece, it’s just a piece of the puzzle and not the whole picture. In fact, at a point, when a character’s work is described as emerging from her Asian identity, she quickly scoffs it by emphasizing that her New Jersey upbringing plays a more influential factor. 

Moreover, the relationship between them behaves as an entity of its own. It’s not one of inseparable friends or rivals, even when antagonism and bitterness can emerge. Just of people that remain attached to each other as they explore the different ways the notion of community can manifest in their life and, ultimately what makes it even more compelling is how the vision that each of the characters develop forces the others to grow.

An eerily similar dystopia.

However, just as Memory Piece is a story about characters living the multi-faceted aspects of their identities, it is also about the city of New York and the rapid changes it confronted during the turn of the century. Ko doesn’t hide away from nostalgic pop-culture references that, when combined with the characters’ yearning for meaning in the modern world, create a notion of “nostalgia for the future”. While it does that, it also showcases a world where the issues of gentrification, social media, and consumerism that many question today did not emerge from a vacuum but rather are the conclusion of trends that have decades in the making.

Yet, such emphasis on the world surrounding its characters comes at the expense of time with Giselle, Jackie, and Ellen and, at times, stuffs the pacing of the novel as it reaches its last third, a jump into the 2040s where a massive authoritarian dystopia takes control of the United States. The concept is very interesting. Some of the elements are terrifyingly recognizable: ever-present devices, gig economy jobs, lack of transparency of personal data, and rampant limitations of movements for displaced individuals. However, the lack of explanation of the mechanics of how the country got to that point takes away from the grounded characters’ dynamic and ends up muddling the ambitious yet tightly executed thematic exploration, capping the novel with a scattered denouement that is logical, and even creative, but falls flat in comparison to the rest of the novel.

Despite this, Memory Piece is a fascinating read and an effervescent reminder that humanity is complex, beautiful, chaotic, and deeply interwoven. With its layered thematic elements and memorable characters, it adds another star to Ko’s promising bibliography.

Memory Piece by Lisa Ko is available for purchase now.