[Memories] are absolutely vital! Just look at what happens with those suffering from dementia. Lose your memory and you lose a fundamental part of who you are. But memories are an illusion. They become more fixed the more you think of them, and each time you remember, you are recalling remembering the memory rather than the memory itself. This is why Revisiting is so addictive for Neffy. She’s gets to see everything, not just her circumscribed memory. ― Claire Fuller, Interview, Bookanista
What booksellers are saying about The Memory of Animals
- An eerie, strangely satisfying pandemic story. A study in human behavior and interaction that Fuller weaves into a compelling story with surprising twists. An engrossing read with rich characters and drama.
― Jamie Fiocco from Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC | Buy from Flyleaf Books
- Undoubtedly, COVID-19 inspired a whole host of dystopian pandemic novels—but none like this. Neffy, a 27-year-old marine biologist, finds herself volunteering for an experimental vaccine trial that was previously never tested on humans. While in-clinic, she writes letters to her octopus muse amid her frightening, disorienting experience in captivity. Imagine The Soul of an Octopus meets How High We Go in the Dark.
― Sydney Bozeman from Parnassus Books in Nashville, TN | Buy from Parnassus Books
- Neffy is a disgraced marine biologist obsessed with octopuses since childhood. She and four other people are trapped on an upper floor of a hospital in London as a mysterious plague causing memory loss, sensory damage, and death sweeps the world. They are volunteers in an experimental vaccine trial, but all the hospital staff have disappeared leaving them alone with with an air conditioning system broken at the coldest setting, little food, and each other. All are there escaping or searching for something. What would you do to protect yourself and those you love, especially when there is almost nothing left?
― Kelly Justice from Fountain Books in Richmond, VA | Buy from Fountain Bookstore
About Claire Fuller
Claire Fuller is the author of Our Endless Numbered Days, which won the Desmond Elliott Prize; Swimming Lessons; Bitter Orange; and Unsettled Ground, which won the Costa Novel Award and was a finalist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Winchester and lives in Hampshire with her husband.
