We are walking, talking collections of memories. Every experience we have is in the past. That really awkward wave I gave to someone who was decidedly not waving at me? In the past. The time I called my teacher “mom” in front of my first-grade class? Past. Even the most present-feeling moments—the delicious explosion of flavor after the snappy bite of a chili dog—are, strictly speaking, nanoseconds in the past as the brain processes their signals. And then there are the core memories: grief-sticken loss, immense joy, pride at a long-sought accomplishment. These are the pillars of memory that support all the others, the helix of our memory DNA. In Recursion, Blake Crouch examines and twists the role of our memories with his trademark “real world but with one crazy sci-fi element” flair.
Moderate plot and setup spoilers follow for Recursion.
After a devastating encounter with a woman perched on the edge of a building (she didn’t make it), NYPD Detective Barry Sutton begins investigating “False Memory Syndrome,” a fringe illness that results in people suddenly experiencing an onrush of memories from a different life. Barry’s investigation leads him to an incredible technology that has massive implications on the world at large. Meanwhile, Helena Smith researches memories in search of a way to preserve them. She wants to help her mother, who is stricken with Alzheimer’s. A flashy billionaire named Marcus Slade catches on to her research and recruits Helena to help build a machine that may do more than just replay memories.
Blake Crouch has a knack for blending sci-fi and thriller genre elements into a plot with lots of velocity. I saw it in Upgrade and Dark Matter, both of which feature a similar Crouch benchmark: dialing up a hyper-focused sci-fi idea in the real world and playing it out to its conclusion. As such, I enjoy his books for their plots. They’re almost always short-ish stories of ~300 pages with a few POV characters and twists that would feel at home in any mystery thriller. In the informal trilogy of three similar Crouch books, Recursion stands among its peers and occasionally outperforms them.
Recursion’s core concept intrigued me from the jump. Marcus Slade commandeers Helena’s research and discovers he can send a person back into one of their memories. The implications are obviously gargantuan. Each go-around creates a branching reality. When the subject of the memory time travel reaches the date and time of their original return, all the memories of their previous life return, creating False Memory Syndrome as our characters first come to know it.
The plot unfolds at a breakneck pace. Early on, Helena and Barry are in the dark about Recursion’s many mysteries. Next, they’re uncovering the implications of memory travel. Before long, they’re jumping back in time at a rapid clip. It’s like narrative whiplash, and Crouch plays it to marvelous results. For every segment of near-crushing momentum, we get periods of stillness that fit nicely into the novel’s fabric. Barry lost his daughter to a car accident years ago, and he eventually (and unwittingly) goes back to the day she died, where he saves her. Only years later, after a life lived with the daughter he’d lost, does he realize her memories of that day—of dying—will come flooding back in a traumatic deluge. The loving montage of Barry’s life as it might’ve been is upended in one fell swoop, a turn Crouch has mastered.
I’ve spoiled plenty already—it’s hard not to with a book like Recursion. Still, there are plenty of mysteries left for you to unravel, and I recommend you check the book out if you’re even a little curious. It’s fun, fast, and flashy.
Rating: Recursion – 8.0/10
-Cole
