The Memory Artists - Softcover

Moore, Jeffrey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143017497 ISBN 13: 9780143017493

Publisher: Penguin Canada, 2006

Synopsis

In the tradition of Jonathan Safran Foer and Jonathan Lethem, Jeffrey Moore effortlessly juggles different voices and narrative styles to get at the very heart of what it means to remember and to forget.

Noel Burun is a hypermnesiac synaesthete: his memory is unrelentingly exact, and he sees spoken words as vibrant explosions of colour, a sensation that often leaves him befuddled and bewildered. Adding to his frustration is his mother's slow descent into the quicksand of Alzheimer's. A man who remembers too much and a woman who remembers too little—both struggle to make sense of their worlds in a house bloated with memories.

About this title

About the Author:

 

Born in Montreal, Jeffrey Moore was educated at the University of Toronto, the Sorbonne (Paris) and the University of Ottawa. His award-winning novels, published in some 20 countries, include Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain (2000), which won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and The Memory Artists (2004), which won the Canadian Authors Association Award. Both novels have been optioned for film. His most recent work, The Extinction Club, was nominated for the Hugh MacLennan Prize, the Arthur Ellis Award and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He lives in Val Morin in the Laurentians.

 

Review:

'the story is unforgettably human...[Moore] leaves the reader spellbound.' -- Samantha Boyce SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY (22.8.04) 'Althought Moore tantalisingly leaves many questions unanswered, all the hallmarks of his fiction are here. They include an ability to create engaging characters, and a fine balance of warmth, insight and eviscerating humour.' -- Julie Wheelwright iNDEPENDENT (27.8.04) 'Jeffrey Moore uses Noel's genius and synaesthesia to offer beautiful descriptions of other luridly coloured (and memory dysfunctional) characters, as well as his experience of his mother's disease to portray the agony of watching a loved one's inevitable decline. He also finds time to delve into the sometimes murky world of medical research and comment on the role of medicine as an interface between science and art...wonderfully intense.' -- Lindsay Banham THE LANCET (4.9.04) 'Jeffrey Moore's second novel is a model of inventiveness...Parts of the novel are very moving. The excerpts from Stella's and Noel's diaries, as Alzheimer's takes its hold, and the depictions of Stella's condidtion, show how the disease kills two people.' -- Alan White TLS (17.9.04) 'Jeffrey Moore presents us with a truly bizarre group of characters engaged in incredible pursuits. He mixes straight narrative, overseen by a rather sinister Svengali-like professor of neurology, with diary entries, newspaper reports and end notes providing a sense of scholarly authenticity to his fantasy.' -- Gordon Parsons MORNING STAR (8.11.04) 'A challenging book, bristling with scientific and literary references from Feynman to Baudelaire by way of Nietzsche and Rossetti, this will not fail to make a huge impact.' GOOD BOOK GUIDE (1.12.04) 'The Memory Artists is extraordinarily erudite and written with consummate elegance. It is hilarious, filled with pathos and irony, twisted, satirical, tragicomic and extremely challenging. It is a delight...beautiful...inspired, what more can I say? Read it.' CHATSHOW NETWORK (Book of the Week - 22 November)

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Canada
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0143017497
• ISBN 13: 9780143017493
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336