This book….what a ride. It’s a little bit sci-fi, this world very like our own but with a technology that can erase memories. Interested customers can visit this fancy clinic, to voluntarily remove a memory or maybe it happens in a more sinister way too? And maybe it doesn’t always work.

While the premise is interesting enough, the way the story is crafted is what really hooked me. At first it’s jumping from character to character, seemingly making no sense at all - why do I care about these people and what was the deal with that one again?? Taking notes might be helpful. It’s hard to remember all the storylines but then…things start coming together enough to make a little bit of sense. In the end, I still couldn’t connect all the dots but I enjoyed this one! It was great for something a little different.

This book had a very interesting concept to begin with, that I really enjoyed. The pacing fell a bit flat for me, and this type of contemporary sci-fi isn't my favorite genre, but I still enjoyed this one.

Thank you to Netgalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

There are some first novels that are kind of painfully obvious that they’re a first novel, and unfortunately this is one of them. I was drawn in by the idea of looking at the effects of a memory removal clinic on a personal level, but in the end, all our POV characters ending up connected to each other ended up being too trite for me, and it could’ve used some trimming to be a bit more focused editorially. Also a minor thing that irritated me - the references to Eternal Sunshine were too frequent. I finished this last night, and hilariously, I’m already forgetting specifics of the plot. A solid first attempt at a novel, but not anything that particularly stood out for me.

I enjoyed this book. I found the concept very interesting. I have not read other novels about memory removal, so it seemed especially unique to me.
The story is part sci fi, part dystopia. It is told from the POV of several characters who all had had various memories wiped. All of these people are tied together by the Nepenthe memory removal clinic in London. Some of the characters and their personal stories are better developed than others, but the author included an interesting variety of people and reasons why they wanted to have memories removed. Discovery of what those memories were provided an intriguing element of mystery to the novel. Discussion of what memories are, how they are formed, and how they change over time added a philosophical angle that gave me something interesting to ponder.
This novel takes place at the present time and the premise seems reasonably believable. The author did not offer a belabored explanation of how the technology to affect the memory removal actually works, which I appreciated. It was vague enough to allow the reader to fill in the blanks and suspend disbelief.
I like dystopian novels, and this was a good one.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

First off-beautiful cover art! I was excited to read this speculative fiction story about a clinic that deletes unwanted memories. There are two types of memory deletions- one the person goes in for and the other is done secretly so the client will willingly not know the procedure ever happened. After several clients start having memory leaks where some fragments of their previous memories start to happen but they can’t put the pieces together, they are given the opportunity,due to legal action taken against the clinic, to have the deleted memory restored.
With this book I was expecting more of a suspenseful thriller or deep speculation but it was more to do with company corruption and the emotional impact of having the memory back. It was a book that makes you wonder what you would do if you were in that situation. Unfortunately this was not the type of book I was expecting and felt that some of the buildups for the main characters fell flat.

Thank you to the publishers, author and NetGalley for the free copy of this book.

I really enjoyed this. Wasn't sure I would like the ever changing perspectives but they really worked, as different as they all were. Loved the whole premise, although I was slightly mad at the ending. This definitely isn't going to be the book for everyone but I thought it was perfect.

Tell Me an Ending is an alternate universe where a voluntary medical procedure that erases bad memories can be done. There are two ways to go about this, you know what memory you've had erased you just cant remember it or you have no idea you've had a memory erased and you just continue with your life as if its never happened. Something has gone wrong with the latter and people are getting traumatic and unexplained flashbacks. Once a way to revert the memories is discovered, the company is required by law to attempt to reach out to everyone who doesn't know they had a memory erased and offer to restore that memory. This book follows five characters and their relation with this memory loss technology.

This felt like 5 short stories set in the same universe except you're reading all of them at the same time and you have to swap to a different story each time one gets interesting. Some of the stories are interesting and some aren't but, overall, the reading experience was miserable.

I want to mention that some plotlines have conclusions while others don't because I know open ended endings annoy a lot of readers.

If you're thinking about reading this book I wont discourage you, just be aware that each (long) chapter is a vastly different plot line and the characters are only connected in the absolute loosest sense at the end. If you don't like short stories or reading more than one book at a time, I don't think this is for you.

Loved this complex and interwoven story. Definitely a unique concept and extremely well executed. If you love a sci-fi and books that make you think, check this one out!

Published by ‎ Scribner on March 1, 2022

Tell Me an Ending imagines a future technology that allows the pinpoint erasure of selected memories. People can elect to remember that they had a memory erased or can choose to have no memory of the procedure that wiped out a bit of their past. A lawsuit compels Nepenth, the company that performs the erasures, to tell the latter group that their memories have been erased. Nepenth is also forced to restore the memories of those who wish to get them back. The novel tells the stories of several characters who either know or learn that a part of their past has been deleted.

The concept is intriguing. Curiosity creates a natural dilemma as Nepenth’s “self-confidential” patients (the ones who choose to forget the procedure) wonder what they’ve forgotten and why they wanted to forget. Some might want to recover the memories to reduce the anxiety of not understanding their full past. At the same time, if the memories were so unbearable that they wanted to erase them, does it make sense to have them restored, only to be tormented by them again? A key character suggests a possible answer: taking away memories also erases identity. How do you know who you are unless you remember who you have been? If you did something bad and wanted to forget about it, how do you safeguard against repeating your past when you don’t know what you did?

Most of the key characters have had the procedure and are wondering whether they should reclaim their memories. When Mirande is offered a memory restoration, she has no idea what she suppressed. Her husband Finn suspects that Mirande had an affair with David while Finn was working in Singapore. Is that what Mirande erased? Would that explain why David is suddenly back in their lives?

William did something during his employment as a police officer that he paid to forget because he couldn’t live with the guilt. It’s not legal for cops to get memory wipes (they need to remember evidence), nor is it legal to erase memories of crimes, but William does it anyway.

Oscar is traveling the world, convinced that someone is pursuing him. He leaves for a new destination every time he believes he’s been found. He has a necklace made of teeth but he doesn’t remember how he acquired it. Nor does he remember his childhood. Oscar is an example of someone whose life was clearly not made better by forgetting his past.

Mei is linked to a different character in a way that Jo Harkin conceals from the reader for much of the novel. She is a failed college student who has vague memories of doing something in Amsterdam. She travels to Amsterdam to reconstruct the missing event.

A couple of other characters, Noor and Louise, work for Nepenth. The organizing plot revolves around Louise’s involvement in a secret project that goes beyond the simple removal of an unwanted memory by experimenting with a more ambitious goal. Louise is dealing with the consequences of that project while Noor, who has been kept in the dark, pokes into Louise’s secretive actions. Louise also had a project of her own that involved making memory deletion available to people who seemed to need it but were not lawfully entitled to it.

Tell Me an Ending explores the moral complications of selective memory erasure. If guilt and remorse are necessary and useful consequences of bad behavior, is it socially harmful to allow the suppression of memories of misconduct? Noor and Louise focus the novel’s ethical theme near the novel’s end as they argue about the benefits and detriments of Louise’s decision to substitute her own judgment for society’s judgment as to who should be entitled to a memory wipe. The debate is about the shades of gray that complicate every moral judgment, as well as the single shade of green that Louise earns from giving people pain relief who aren’t legally entitled to it. Noor has her own reasons for feeling guilty. The two characters lay guilt trips on each other, inviting the reader to decide which one makes the better case.

Apart from Oscar and William, the stories of the individual characters feel incomplete. While the individual stories are a useful means of exploring the ethical ramifications of memory erasure, Harkin shortchanges the emotional development of the characters who cope with the aftermath of Nepenth’s procedures. The novel as a whole is less than the sum of its incomplete parts. The eventual focus on Louise and Noor is unfortunate, as they are the least interesting characters. Still, I give Harkin credit for her thorough discussion of the moral ramifications of a procedure that neuroscientists are likely to learn to perform in the not-so-distant future.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

2.5 or 3 out of 5 stars. Interesting concepts: what if memory deletion replaced therapy? Don’t want to work out your issues? Just delete the problem! As one would imagine, the mind is a tangled place and we are nowhere near understanding every aspect of brain functionality, let along deleting a singular memory with nothing else as collateral damage. That’s the essence of this book. I liked the idea, it was definitely interesting. But I got a little bogged down by the slowness of the story progression and the sheer number of characters. For the first half I couldn’t keep track of who was who, who knew who, etc. Would enjoy this is Black Mirror episode form, for sure.

The premise behind this book had me super interested so I was excited to get the chance to read this. This follows a few different people who all end up being connected to Nepenthe, which is a company that can remove memories. I ended up being really interested in everyone except for Noor who actually worked at Nepenthe. The further you get in this book the more you get to see how everyone is connected to Nepenthe. I do have to say I would have liked to have read from Louise's point of view.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the galley.

Don’t let the dystopian label on this book fool you, because this book is in no way dystopian. I have no clue why it’s labeled that way, because it’s rather futuristic and not really a story that matches with the concept of a world filled with great suffering and injustice. Does the plot revolve around something that is allegedly meant to alleviate great suffering? Yes. But the rest of the world inside this book seems quite analogous to our world today, just that in the world inside this book there’s a company that you can pay to remove memories. That’s just something out of science and contemplative fiction. That’s not dystopic–it’s a thought experiment.

“Tell Me An Ending” is a deeply philosophical book, but the questions it asks aren’t new ones at all: do our memories shape who we are? Would we be the same people we are today if one of those life-shaping memories was scrubbed out as if we had taken an eraser to our brains? Or would the erasure of that memory, once accomplished, possibly put us on uneven enough ground we could find ourselves unable to navigate our lives without this deep-seated feeling that something is missing. Something is wrong. Something is lost. Could we look in the mirror and reconcile our reflection outside to the one outside?

I will tell you: this book is long, and it’s a mosaic of a story. It’s told in bits and pieces from different POVs until they all start to intersect with one another, and then the picture becomes clearer, but even at the end the picture still hasn’t been completely clarified. This is a book for readers that love to read and think about the big questions. It will take you time to read, that’s for sure. Is it an excellent book? Yes, I think so. It’s just not going to be a book for your average reader.

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review.

If you could painlessly wipe out your worst memory, would you do it? What do you think would happen if you did?

This speculative near-future novel has been carefully crafted to serve up a piercing, gripping, thought provoking look at what would happen if technology developed to the point to be able to wipe out a person’s specific memory of an event. The novel circles around the central question of how do painful memories impact our personalities, our happiness, our sense of self, as well as the unfolding choices we make for the rest our lives. And it turns out there’s no singular answer.

The tech company Nepenthe has developed a chemical memory erasure technique. Like all science, the trials start out messy with realizations of just how memories intricately link together, and that wiping out one painful memory can impinge on many more. Once refined, Nepenthe opened multiple clinics throughout England, which are pricey and discreet to protect the identities of its clients.

There are also multiple levels of secrecy and deception for those who do not want other to know what memory has been wiped out, and the self-deception of those who opt to have their own memory of the memory wipe erased as well. This latter choice comes along with accountants, bankers, and lawyers to cover up that the procedure ever took place, leaving no financial trace and rock-solid NDAs in place.

All’s going well, or seems to be, until people who have had the procedure start reporting “memory traces” where the erased memory starts to regenerate. Protests and a class action lawsuit ensue, with the outcome being that those who want their memory restored can have it done and even those who had opted to wipe the memory of having had the procedure get notified that they indeed had a memory wipe and the right to have it restored. Mayhem ensues as no clients know what memory they had erased.

To circle all ethical dimensions of this, the novel sweeps us in and out of the lives of four people who have had memory wipes, as well as Nora and her boss Louise on the professional psychology staff. Among the four client plots we follow, there’s not a deep dive into character development but a variety of situations to ponder, including the erasure of a memory of a police officer involving shame and guilt over an action, by guardians of a troubled youth who want to eradicate childhood memories of both parents dying in a car crash, by a girl erasing her memory of a failed love affair, and a Mom who’s not sure what she’s erased but that it’s revelation may damage her marriage.

Ultimately the novel’s provocative philosophy overrides any of the intersecting plotlines, but I found myself okay with that as I fell deep into thought about the moral ambiguity and unpredictable outcomes of deploying a memory erasure.

In our current age we see this all the time: where our rapid tech developments have outstripped considerations of ethics and morality about deploying new tech. Just because we can do something thanks to advanced tech, does it mean we should?

Thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy.

Would you get rid of one of your memories if you could? Completely get rid of it? Decide to excise a part of yourself that until now you thought you had to live with? These are the questions that the POV characters in Tell Me An Ending get the chance to ponder.

In Tell Me An Ending, the world has been taken by storm by the concept of memory removal. A company called Nepenthe has developed a scientific process that can successfully and completely remove any memory that a patient wants to be removed. Or so they thought. Former patients have been reporting flashes of the memories that they thought were gone forever, and it is revealed that the memories could potentially be recovered. We follow four different people as they grapple with the concept of memory removal and retrieval and one Nepenthe psychologist who is starting to believe that all is not what it seems at the company.

At almost 500 pages, this book was LONG. But it surprisingly never felt it. I was thoroughly engrossed in each of the POVs; they all brought something different. My heart hurt for each of them, even Noor the psychologist, who hadn't had a removal but had to deal with the fallout from the revelations. Tell Me An Ending took a concept that we've seen before in movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and made it feel completely real, and I found myself pondering whether or not I'd ever get a removal if it became possible.

This literary sci-fi was so genius and complex in the way that it utilized the seemingly separate POVs. Once I started to notice how they intertwined, I was amazed at the plot gymnastics that Harkin pulled off. Overall, this book was thoughtful and utterly heartbreaking in its scope, and the type of debut that I love: one that makes me think about my place in the world and the way I move through it.

While there is certainly a lot of potential, and some good plotlines, in this novel, the overall impact is rather underwhelming, given the advance praise and the blurbs.

The story begins off somewhat rattlingly, but soon gathers some much-needed steam, as we see Noor at the Nepenthe clinic trying to make sense of a mystery that seems to be evolving right under her nose. Some more characters are introduced, and employing parallel story-lines approach, the book makes you keep track of six separate story-lines - that's perhaps two more than I'd ideally have wanted in a sci-fi techno-thriller that's written as effusively as this one is.

The stories - all of them - move ahead, but not as much as one would wish for. After a while, it really becomes a tad difficult to keep track of who has experienced what, who is suffering from what, to say nothing of the their ancillary characters, all the while hoping the story is going to get these strands together, eventually - in some way.

By the two-third mark, I was literally asking out aloud "Just Give Me An Ending".

Seriously though, there is clearly a lot of effort spent in building depth into the storylines, and there's a tremendous amount of pain and anguish and suffering the author has tried to depict for all of her main characters with, but with so many of them displaying such a variety of impacts and effects, it becomes rather tedious to empathize with all of them at the same time.

Worse of all, ultimately, you realize Noor is not a protagonist. Not by a long shot. That by itself is probably not as much of a shock as the fact that there's no real mystery here, and the thriller aspect is limited to about 10% of the book.

Not to belabor the point but, while the writing is sure-handed and confident, there are stretches of the book that look obviously stretched and meandering. At times, it seemed that while the intent may have been to develop depth, the actual effect turned out to be much less charitable.

I can appreciate how this may appeal so many readers, but was a sizeable letdown for me.

This novel is set in contemporary times, but it is a world where a company named Nepenthe has learned how to delete unwanted memories: some of them are so traumatic that the patient opts to have even the memory of the deletion procedure voided. When it is discovered that buried memories can reassert themselves (called "traces") a court order forces the company to contact these subjects and offer to restore their lost memories. Each of them has to grapple with the question of whether it is better to get the (possibly traumatic) memory back, or continue living without it.

The story follows Noor, a psychologist working at the Nepenthe memory removal clinic in London (along with her mentor Louise), and four patients. Mei, a troubled grad school dropout in Kuala Lumpur, wonders why she remembers a city (Amsterdam) she does not remember visiting. Finn, an Irish architect living in the Arizona desert, begins to suspect his wife of having an affair. Oscar, a handsome young man with almost no memories at all, travels the world constantly looking over his shoulder. He has an unknown source of funds, and is pursued by mysterious agents. William, a former police inspector in England, struggles with PTSD and the breakdown of his marriage. He thinks he should have a memory removed, but does not know about the memory gap he already has.

Each of these characters tries to understand what has happened to them. But of course, they are seriously hampered by the memories they have lost. As the narrative proceeds, we eventually learn about these memories--to varying degrees--as well as some surprising connections between them. Their stories wind up converging far more than it had appeared in the beginning, although not in an unbelievable way. And while not all of them are completely resolved, the novel still reaches a satisfying conclusion.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced reader's copy.

So many characters and a slow moving storyline. I was intrigued by the idea, but it all fell flat for me unfortunately.

This was a thought-provoking read that takes place in a near future in which removing memories is not only possible, but also a whole business. I really enjoyed the experience and the philosophical aspects about the relationship we have with our memories and the impact they have on us.

This was by far my favorite thing about the book. Tell Me an Ending made me ask myself so many questions, such as: would I choose to have some of my worst memories removed, if I could? But also, because experiences are part of a person, would it be possible to still be myself with some memories removed? And if I ended up having traces of my removed memories, would I keep it that way and trust the decision I’d made in the past, or would I be too curious and wish to know? Would I choose to restore the memories past-me decided to remove?

Tell Me an Ending also questions how reliable our memory really is. There’s the idea that the more we remember something, the more the memory distances itself from reality, from the events that really occurred. Because each retelling brings subtle changes to the story we think we remember, we end up having bits of truth mixed with made up details. I realize that I have so many of these modified memories, and I’m fascinated by the way the brain can create things and make you believe they’re true.

What really kept me wanting to read more was the element of mystery. Every character has missing memories and you obviously want to get further in the book to get to the big reveal. Just like the characters, I wanted to know what had happened to them, but I also felt like getting their memories back could bring more harm than good.

I really loved spending times with these characters! I connected with Mei because of her youth and her anxieties. I liked Oscar and his paranoia. Noor was bringing something different to the story, which I enjoyed a lot. William and Finn were interesting as well. Ultimately, I felt like there was a distance between me and all these characters, like they always kept something to themselves, but it added to the mysterious tone and sort of clinical approach. Overall, the writing fit perfectly with the universe, and really pulled me into the story, while offering something quite dry, reminiscent of some works of classic sci-fi that I read years ago.

Despite loving this book a lot, I was a bit let down by the last quarter. It felt like the conclusions were a bit underwhelming. The build-up was so exciting that I was preparing myself for something different, I guess. I’ve been thinking about this and wondering what kind of ending I could’ve loved, and I don’t have an answer right now. Maybe it shouldn’t have ended, maybe the story should’ve stopped a few pages earlier. To me, it feels like with such a story, there cannot be something like a satisfying ending.

That being said, Tell Me an Ending really was an interesting novel which gave me questions to obsess over during my days at work, and I am thankful for that! If you’re into books with philosophical themes, I’d recommend this one.

NB: The book contains cissexist language (a lot of “he or she” for strangers instead of using “they” and the use of “female” as a noun…) which is something I would’ve preferred not to have in a book released this year, especially when it tries to be diverse with LGBTQ representation and characters of color. I removed a half star for this reason.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Scribner for this eARC!

The premise of this debut dystopian novel revolves around a tech company, Nepenthe, who have the ability to remove unwanted memories. The book follows several character stories, each relating to the deletion process in different ways—an employee at Nepenthe, a former patient, a current patient, etc. This story truly makes the reader wonder about how far we would go as humanity to make ourselves more comfortable, as this technology seems entirely possible in our distant future. With wonderful perspective, a unique writing style, and an unsettling topic, I gave this a firm 5 star review. I have yet to stop thinking about the characters, their lives, and the option of deleting a part of our human selves. Jo Harkin has nailed this science fiction piece!

This is a story written from four different characters and their viewpoints who do something with having some of their memories removed. It's a thought-provoking story about whether it's a good idea to delete memories and about how messing with your mind and memories can affect you and your life. It's a dystopian story that causes reflection on things relating to who you are and what makes you who you are. This story gives me some vibes and reminds me a little of the world in the Matched trilogy as well as it being mentioned as it being like Black Mirror too.
Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for letting me read and review this intriguing read. All thoughts and opinions are my own.