The Forgetting is a story about a world where everyone
forgets everything every twelve years. Only Nadia remembers everything. She’s
an adventurer likes to go over the wall that confines the city and explore the
world beyond. With one sister who loves her, one sister who hates her, a father
who abandoned her, and a mentally ill mother, she has plenty to want to escape
from.
I honestly probably wouldn’t have read this book if I had
realized it was science fiction and not fantasy, but I’m glad I did.
The planetary worldbuilding is beautiful. The planet has
distinct terrain, and it’s more severely tilted on its axis than ours, or maybe
the settlement is just farther north, but they experience different seasons: a
light season and a dark season. Nighttime is referred to as resting time. Even
the names have worldbuilding built into them: Lydia the Weaver, Nadia the Dyer’s
Daughter, etc. I’ve been going through Patricia C.
Wrede’s Worldbuilding Questionnaire. It’s very intense—26 pages
single-spaced when copied into a Word document—but I’m willing to bet Sharon
Cameron went through similar effort.
Because I lost some memories in a recent brain operation, I
read this book hoping for a message about the importance of memories. In the
book, there’s a famous inscription that says “I am made of my memories. Without
memories, they are nothing.” Accordingly, anyone who goes through the
forgetting and doesn’t have a book to tell them who they are gets put in
separate labor camps with poor conditions, where breeding is prohibited.
Reacting to this, it’s easy for the reader to see that, of course, the
inscription isn’t true. Even without memories, people are worthwhile. Furthermore,
one character chooses to live without memories and becomes happier and more
valuable to society without them. I appreciate this message that memories do
not completely define us, and I’m sure it means a lot to people in similar
situations, and people who are impacted by dementia and Alzheimer’s. Thank you
for this message, Sharon Cameron.
All in all: 5 stars
