Review: Tell Me an Ending

Set in the town of Crowshill outside London, Tell Me an Ending by Jo Harkin boldly imagines an eerily plausible present where people with unwanted memories can have them deleted by a secretive British tech company named Nepenthe. Harkin's intriguing debut features multiple interconnected narratives nestled within the larger whole, as well as characters whose memory deletions send them traveling across the globe in search of answers to missing pieces of their lives.

Central to the story is the enigmatic Noor, a socially awkward Nepenthe psychologist with a tea addiction. Noor falls in love with her client, Elena, precipitating a personal and professional crisis that deepens when she discovers her boss and mentor, Louise, is committing an even more serious violation of company policy involving Elena and other clients. As Noor investigates Louise's actions, she is drawn into a horrifying cover-up at Nepenthe that threatens to destroy her faith in its mission.

Nepenthe's premise is deceptively simple: a PTSD sufferer or someone struggling with a distressing experience can have that traumatic memory erased in a safe and highly effective manner, deleting only the targeted memory and leaving everything else intact. The technology, it turns out, is not foolproof--some former clients start experiencing "traces" of removed memories. Nepenthe is sued and must offer all clients the opportunity to restore deleted memories, including those who had requested to erase the act of memory deletion itself.

For college drop-out Mei and former police officer William, there is initially some relief in discovering that the traces they experience are not signs of madness but actual memories that were removed. Meanwhile, for Irish architect Finn, the revelation that his wife secretly deleted a memory sends shockwaves through their marriage. Oscar, a young man with no memory at all but a full bank account, worries that he must have done something terrible in his past. He travels from Budapest to Marrakech, leading a life on the run until the truth of his life story catches up to him.

Harkin masterfully probes her characters, questioning whether deleted memories translate into altered narratives that fundamentally transform who a person is and their relationships with loved ones, echoing a question Noor asks herself: "Does wiping a note change the rest of the symphony?" As Noor uncovers the extent of Louise's deception and its impact on William, Mei and others, she finally confronts the true cost of the technology she has devoted her career to promoting. --Shahina Piyarali, reviewer

Shelf Talker: This dense and thrilling speculative novel features a psychologist-turned-whistleblower working at a secretive British tech company that specializes in memory removal.

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