4+

Neffy (Nefeli) decides to volunteer for Vaccine Biopharm on a clinical trial, a sink or swim experiment after exposure to ‘dropsy virus’. This pandemic which is sweeping all before it causes horrific symptoms. The volunteers are literally lab rats but it is a desperate race against time. As the danger outside intensifies, Neffy learns of a device from one of the volunteers via which it’s possible to revisit the past. This well written novel takes us on this journey interspersed with letters Neffy writes to ‘H’ detailing her interest and love of octopus.

This is another multi layered, creative, different and original novel from one of my favourite authors. First of all, the raging pandemic is horrifying, it’s a dark, chaotic and terrifying backdrop which intensifies the situation with and for the vaccine volunteers highlighting the life and death nature of what they are doing. It is utterly dystopian with exterior events shocking to the core with the internal group dynamics often mirroring the outside affairs.

The letters to H and the storyline involving octopus are my favourite sections as they reveal the humanity of Neffy. It’s also a fusion (or is that confusion?) as the volunteers are as captive as are many animals, the humans here are in an experiment as are some unfortunate animals and so on, yet they have the desire for freedom in common.

The other excellent sections are when Neffy revisits her past which entails all the human experience of love, loss and grief with parts being very moving.

This is another very different novel, it’s imaginative but is inevitably dark and bleak as we are still in our own pandemic so it may not be for everyone. However, it is well worth reading in my opinion as Claire Fuller is such a talented writer.

With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Penguin General for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

I LOVE Claire Fuller, her stories are so captivating and immersive, I feel like I’m watching a film! This story centres around a pandemic and some vaccine volunteers who are locked up watching the horrors of the pandemic unfold. It was very ‘28 days later’ vibes! Another great read by Fuller, that left me with goosebumps, I’d recommend!

Fuller is an auto buy author for me.
There's just something about the way she puts the words down, that has me wanting more each time.
I can't explain what I liked about this book, or indeed didn't like, but I can say I think you should read it.
It played on my emotions somewhat,in a good way.
Made me think what memories I would revisit, who I would want to see again.
The pandemic scenes might be too soon for some, but you'd be missing out on a great read if you let that put you off.

Well written with an interesting storyline and well deveoped characters. It was definitely a though provoking read and I am still thinking about it now

Neffy volunteers for a vaccine trial at the start of what turns out to be the pandemic to end all pandemics. She wakes up from a severe reaction to find the hospital deserted except for four other young volunteers. This dystopian plot line is intersected with letters to the mysterious H, her love of octopuses (octopi) and a quaint new technology “The Revisitor” that activates highly vivid memories. I could not quite decipher what the overall message was - the importance and dangers of memories? The morals of how we treat animals? The everyday choices between right and wrong? By the end of the book, I still wasn’t.

On the plus side: Claire Fuller is an amazing writer. She gets into the heads of her Gen Z characters very convincingly and the pandemic mood is almost top pitch perfect. Advance warning for readers who are still traumatised by the COVID lockdowns and/or who have lost someone in the pandemic: this may not be the book for you. The octopus storyline is wonderful. The opening line “Is is possible to fail in love at twelve, and with an octopus?” - is one of the best in a long time.

And yet. Once again with this author, I did not quite like it. Just like with Unsettled Ground, I was unsettled, recognised the good writing and admired the overall effect, but I simply did not like any of the characters. More than that, there is something in both novels of a fascination with illness that grates on my nerves. And the ending was a bit too trite. This being said, this is very personal and other readers are likely to very much enjoy this book

The Memory of Animals is a novel about a woman on a vaccine trial, exploring what saving people, freedom, and survival might mean. Neffy has volunteered to be part of a new vaccine trial during a deadly pandemic, for a vaccine that has not yet been tested on humans. She'll be shut away for three weeks, or so she thinks. But when things start to get much worse outside the unit where her and the other volunteers are being held, what was a controlled trial becomes a fight for survival, and Neffy is introduced to a strange device from one of the others in the unit that allows you to revisit your old memories. She ends up caught between the horrors of surviving in the present and reliving the difficult moments of her past.

As might be apparent from the blurb, this is a book that is a lot to deal with given the past few years, which is obviously the point as it depicts a variant of a virus that suddenly takes over in devastating ways and explores some of the individual choices that come with that, along with past choices about who to save and how. The narrative follows Neffy starting the trial and then things going wrong outside in London, and then what happens next as those inside the unit try to survive, with a lot of flashbacks from Neffy as she uses the revisiting device. It is also intercut with letters from Neffy to a mysterious H, detailing her interest in octopi.

There's a lot of interesting stuff in the novel, not just around the present day of the narrative and what happens when a pandemic wipes out a load of people at once, but in Neffy's past as she deals with a sick father and works caring for octopi. The moral questions around the vaccine unit and the actions of the characters might be a bit wearing without the other elements of Neffy's past, which stop the book from just being a solely pandemic dystopian type novel. Ultimately, some people will probably not want to read the book because it definitely hits very close to home at times, whereas other people may find that it takes too much of a 'what if' invented dystopia tone (particularly with the revisiting memories element) for something that does take a lot from experiences of Covid.

The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller has three strands to it - Neffy's experiences in the vaccine trial unit with the other volunteers, her Revisit experiences where she can go back into her past, and her letters to an octopus that she set free. The parts I enjoyed the most were to do with the octopus.