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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant & Tragic, March 25, 2010
This review is from: Memory (Hard Case Crime) (Mass Market Paperback)
Memory is the final novel from mystery grandmaster Donald Westlake. It is sold as a paperback original, coming from dedicated pulp specialists Hard Case Crime. The concept of amnesia - and lost identity - is a common one through the pulps. Many of the great (and not-so-great) authors have used this method to create dramatic tension ("Is this woman a friend or an enemy?"), redefine characters ("I'm a good guy now!") and set up a shocking final reveal ("Good lord, I'M the dead man!"). Westlake's Memory transforms this literary device into an art form. Paul Cole begins the book in the arms of another man's wife. Unfortunately, the man (armed with heavy furniture) takes exception to that. So by the second chapter, Paul is in the hospital with a bad concussion. Although Paul's breaks and bruises heal quickly, his memory does not. He quickly realizes - and then re-realizes and re-realizes - that his life has changed completely. After a brief convalescence, Paul is dumped out on the streets of a seedy Midwestern town, with only a handful of doctor's bills and a morally-outraged local cop to keep him company. Paul's initial mission is simple: get back to New York City (according to his wallet, he lives there). As the book progresses, Paul's mission becomes less simple. Day to day actions like paying rent or getting to work present major challenges to him. He can't even remember his own taste in music, much less what he got up to with his last girlfriend(s). His initial goal of getting back to New York City proves a false hope - Paul is surrounded by an "aura of hopelessness" (to quote one of his old friends). Just changing location doesn't shrug it off. Westlake is a great writer - which makes this a dangerous book. It is impossible not to empathise - and therefore suffer alongside - Cole. From chapter to chapter, Cole's life becomes an increasingly Kafka-esque struggle, and the reader is dragged alongside him every stumbling step of the way. This is an exceptional and painful book. It is the essence of noir without a hint of crime - one man's unceasing, provocative struggle to make good in a relentlessly grim world.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A different side to Westlake, April 8, 2010
This review is from: Memory (Hard Case Crime) (Mass Market Paperback)
When author Donald E. Westlake died at the end of 2008, he left only one unpublished novel, Memory, which he had written early in his career (sometime in the '60s), but which was rejected by his agent for being "too literary" (i.e., unsellable). So, it was put in his files and never saw the light of day. With the assistance of Lawrence Block and Abby Adams (Mrs. Westlake), Charles Ardai of Hard Case Crime has made Memory available now for all the Westlake fans who've been clamoring for one more book from the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster. Paul Cole, a road company actor in a touring Broadway hit, stops off for some midnight fun after that night's show. While in flagrante delicto, her husband storms in and brains Paul with a chair, putting him in the hospital and knocking the sense right out of his head. He can't remember much for any significant length of time. Cole struggles every day just to survive: to work and make money so he can get back to New York and try to find his old life again. But things like room and board, food, and a general inability because of regular expenses keep him stuck. He tries to make notes when he remember bits and pieces, but when he returns to the notes later, they don't seem to mean anything anymore. How can you buy a bus ticket if you don't remember why you were putting aside the money in the first place? And Paul is always fearful that he will forget something important, like to go to work, but daily events settle into a routine and they get a little bit easier for a while. Then the police come for him.... Memory is a great book, and I write this without reservation. It outshines anything else Westlake has done and makes his intricately plotted Dortmunder and Parker novels seem like silly trifles. I'll even go so far as to say that from now on, every Westlake book will be compared to it, every fan defined by their appreciation of it. ("You like Westlake? Have you read Memory?") How ironic that such an early book could end his career on such a pinnacle of achievement. The real beauty is how Westlake takes the reader along as if we are on the business end of a leash. Everything Paul feels, we feel (torpor, joy, happiness, confusion, fear), only with the extra knowledge of an outsider, adding suspense to the mix. Since Paul doesn't know what to expect, neither do we, though we desperately want to find out, so we watch with breathless anticipation as he continues on his path toward the rediscovery of Paul Cole. It's tragic to watch Memory unfold, as Cole takes a step forward only to fall behind again, but utterly compelling in a voyeuristic way. It's almost a good thing that Memory was not published back when it was written, because given the author's reputation for short crime novels, it likely would not have seen print at its full 360-page length. And I imagine that one of the scenes that would have been cut -- because it does little to further the plot and adds nothing to the character -- is also one of my favorites. Showing Paul looking for work, with no documentable past, lets Westlake make a wry stab at employment offices who demand efficiency while making it difficult to accomplish due to their interest in doing things just so. And maybe it's also a good thing because, if Memory had been published in the 1960s, Westlake's career might have gone in a different direction. We may have never met Dortmunder or Parker and would know the author instead for his increasingly weighty philosophical novels on the human condition, with crime novels merely something he did "in the early days" (and tried not to talk about too much). Or maybe he would have disappeared altogether. Who knows? What's important is that it is being published now. Forgive the pun, but Memory is unforgettable.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling and tragic...., March 12, 2011
This review is from: Memory (Hard Case Crime) (Mass Market Paperback)
Memory, an early, unpublished manuscript by the late great Donald E. Westlake, is a brilliantly written character study of what losing one's memory really means. In too many books and movies, the amnesiac hero is a romantic figure, surrounded by loving and supportive friends and doctors; in such stories, the amnesia is little more than a mystery to be solved. But, as Westlake shows, loss of memory is really a loss of self, of knowledge, of ability, of friends, of family, of what and who we are. It is an involuntary rebirth. In portraying a man who has lost his memory, Westlake delves into what memory does for us: it is our imagination, our creativity, our reality, for without our memories, what are we? More importantly, who are we? Paul awakes with no memory after being assaulted with a chair by a cuckholded husband. After recovering in a hospital he is ushered out of town by an indignant detective who holds a low view of touring actors--which Paul happens to be. He lands in a small town where he finds a job, makes friends, becomes a kind of substitute son to his landlords, and even finds love. But he is haunted by his past, by who he "really" is. He finally decides to return to New York, guided by information in his wallet, to an apartment, friends, an agent, his acting profession, all of which he remembers only vaguely, as in a dream. What happens to him there and what he eventually decides to do next is heartbreaking. In Memory, Donald Westlake has created a harrowing portrait of what it is to be lost, as a child is lost, without the resources that we depend on every day to find our way back. Written early in his career but not published (possibly because of its themes and denouement) Memory may be Westlake's masterpiece.
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