I really liked the premise of this book. However, I think more could have been made of the section after they left the building. I think that would have made for a better development of the story.
I found the last section rather rushed and would rather have had the story go through everything that had happened after they had left the building, rather than have all of the main points narrated at the end of the book.

I’ve always really enjoyed Claire Fuller’s books so was excited to pick this one up. Firstly it’s a pandemic novel which is not for everyone. Some people definitely think it’s too soon and whilst I am happy to read them it can feel a little triggering at times.
I enjoyed this book overall but I’m not a huge dystopia fan which is why I gave it 3 stars

The Memory of Animals
Claire Fuller

I’m not a fan of sci-fi or dystopian novels as a rule but I am a huge fan of Claire Fuller’s writing and so I was delighted to get the opportunity to read this one.

I really enjoyed it. Great writing, unusual characters and lots to keep you interested and guessing right to the very end. Could see this being an excellent tv drama too!

Thanks to NetGalley & the publishers as always.

This is one of those novels that has hidden layers of meaning that will unsettle and intrigue you as you finish. Set during an unidentified time in London, overtaken by a fierce pandemic, the story echoes our recent experience of Covid-19. There is a familiar lexis used throughout the narrative which can't help but be reminiscent of our recent 2019 pandemic. It made me feel almost possessive of my own 'pandemic' experience, as we know many people around the world have been in relation to what it's really like to endure illness, isolation, entrapment, companionship, survival and grief during a pandemic.

Emotional trauma and uncertainty prevail for the protagonist Neffy who has signed up for the vaccine trial. Vocabulary such as: sanitation, testing negative, isolation, variants, rations etc are used to establish context. The novel opens with Neffy arriving at the medical centre, having signed up to be part of the Dropsy virus private vaccine trial.

However, there's also a strong dystopian atmosphere and I was reminded of Doris Lessing's novel Memoirs of a Survivor. The scenes described from Neffy's perspective as she looks outside the abandoned hospital window have a haunting desperation just like the horrific scenes observed by the woman in Lessing's apocalyptic novel.

In Claire Fuller's story 'Revisiting' is a new technological concept introduced part way through by fellow test subject Leon who convinces Neffy to take part. Neffy returns to nostalgic memories of her past but becomes obsessed by the treatment, which is weird for the reader. In this way readers are able to see events from her past that have led to her current decisions of a sort of self-sacrifice. In fact this revisiting of her memories forms a clever theme of how the past becomes addictive when in traumatic current times.

I'm still not quite sure about the ending! I think it may be too clever for me and I need to think about it further to work it out. A weird and wonderful novel and one with lots to prompt debate!

Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me to read this book in return for an honest review. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book set in a dystopian future during a pandemic. I thought the concept was brilliant and I loved delving deeper into this story. The relationship dynamics between the volunteers was really interesting, some I liked and some really annoyed me. This book really made me think about the situation the characters found themselves in especially since the recent real life pandemic. I thought the ending was perfect. Highly recommended. 4 stars

I love everything this author writes so I was excited for this, and it didn’t disappoint. The atmosphere was dark and intense and created a sense of unease that kept me glued to the story. Claire Fuller has a gift for writing creative and unique books with characters that leap from the page. Another fantastic book from the author and I can’t wait for their next one.

This feels very different to Claire's previous work but is still fantastic. Really enjoyed the characterisation and the story arc. Claire remains one to watch!

In another time there’s another pandemic, and this one plays out differently. Seemingly trapped in her hospital room, Neffy may or may not have received a trial vaccine. But what if she has, and she’s the only one?

The Memory of Animals at first seems very different to Claire Fuller’s previous novels, but persisting is her beautiful prose and talent to perfectly bread-crumb the reader with back story. Neffy’s obsession with an octopus is such a bizarre interlude to the pandemic story, and the contrast keeps things moving along at a lovely pace.

One of Fuller’s gifts is her skill at describing landscape, and yet much of The Memory of Animals is set in a hospital. That being said, I was able to perfectly imagine Neffy’s world in the hospital ward, and her view of the outside world really added to the sense of agoraphobia.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a copy of the e-book in exchange for an honest review.

Although books about pandemics can start to feel oddly dated already, there is something interesting in the ways that Claire Fuller uses them here- as more of a backdrop to a wider conversation about the end of civilisation, and the ways that individuals' needs may come against the wider desires of the state.

In this book, we explore what happens when a non-Covid illness is spreading, and the facility used to test vaccines turns out to be far more than first appeared.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Fig Tree (Penguin), who gave me this eARC in exchange for an honest review.
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“The sense of unreality, of being in a box within a floor of boxes within a building of boxes, makes me go to the exterior window and press my palms flat against the cool glass.
Sophia has replied:
IT’S BAD. HOPE YOUR VACCINE WORKS."

The world of The Memory of Animals is at the mercy of the deadly dropsy virus, for which scientists are still hunting for a cure. Volunteers such as our protagonist, Neffy, have chosen to take part in a clinical trial in London to test a possible vaccine. A disgraced marine biologist, Neffy takes refuge in writing about octopuses in letters to her ‘dearest’ H, and in the use of a device given to her by a fellow volunteer that enables the user to revisit memories. After taking ill from her dose of the vaccine and recovering, Neffy thinks that all she will have to do is wait it out. Unfortunately for her, recovering is only the beginning of her woes.

Though this book felt a little too close to home due to its proximity to the COVID-19 lockdowns, I was intrigued by its premise. I’ve not read many books in which a plague is a major factor in the plot. I found the first section of the novel very interesting as a result. The tension that was set up by the setting, followed by Neffy’s fight with the virus after her vaccine dose, were the best parts of the novel for me.

I will say, however, that the book got weaker as it went on. I felt that the octopus sections and Neffy’s journeys into her memories added to my understanding of her character and why she ended up at the trial. Since I suspect this was their purpose, they fulfilled that function well. However, since these sections did not add anything to the narrative of the novel or to the ending, these began to grate on me as the story went on. I wanted to read what was the current storyline, not Neffy’s memories.

How the twist was revealed felt simultaneously clever and a bit clumsy to me. I had predicted that something horrible had happened to the other volunteers who got their vaccine dosages, and the way Neffy saw the evidence from the other building was well executed. The aftermath of this reveal, from the way Neffy confronted the rest of the surviving volunteers to the ending itself, felt rushed in comparison. I wish the time that had been given to the memories and the octopus sections had instead been used to flesh out the reveal and the ending. That said, I did like the way it was wrapped up. I feel had it been explored a bit more, it would have felt more earned and therefore more rewarding.

All in all, I feel that The Memory of Animals had a good premise, but the outline had too many elements and that spoilt the second half of the book. Understanding Neffy’s past overshadows the plot of the novel itself, which ironically defies the advice Neffy is given when using the memory device. Focusing on her past made her miserable in the present. The same practice weakened this book.

I didn’t love this one, unfortunately. I adored Swimming Lessons and Our Endless Numbered Days, but this novel just didn’t work. While the writing is beautiful, I couldn’t connect with the main character. The story was quite bleak, which is never usually an issue for me, but I found it difficult to engage with. I also feel the strands of the story didn’t come together enough: I’m still not sure what the point of the octopus is, to be honest. And I felt that the use of the devices to explore the past - the letters and the ‘Revisitor’ - were gimmicky.

While Fuller writes isolated characters and desperate situations quite well, this novel was, unfortunately, too uneven for me.

Neffy is taking part in an important clinical trial - for a vaccine that will halt the progress of a deadly virus which appears to have a 100% mortality rate.

She awakes from a coma induced by a powerful reaction to the drug to find herself on a unit which has been abandoned by staff and is peopled by a small number of patients afraid to venture outside.
All communication is lost and there seems scant hope of rescue.

An experimental machine allows Neffy to revisit events from her past, particularly her relationships with her father and boyfriend. And the narrative is interspersed with what appear to be letters addressed to a former lover.

The shadow of Covid hangs over this story, which deals with major themes: humanity’s abuses of the natural world and its inhabitants; the deceits and selfishness of humans; and the survival of the species.

A singular and captivating account. Bleak yet optimistic.

The end of the world as we know it is surprisingly quite a common theme in science fiction. Its our fascination with the idea of mortality; that one day all of this from books, blogs, family, traffic jams and anything we know could just…stop. What happens then? Eternal silence or something else. In Claire Fuller’s interesting science fiction novel, a group of people taking part in a reckless experiment try to work out what is next when their world ends…but entering a new world is just as scary.

The world is in the grip of a pandemic. A new virus known as Dropsy is quickly infecting people at a rapid rate and mortality rates are high. Neffy has volunteered to trial a potential new vaccine staying in a hospital for the next few weeks. The drug has a powerful impact on her and when Neffy finally awakens there are no staff; the roads are quiet and just a few patients remain. Neffy needs to validate what is the right thing to do and finds an unexpected new technology offers a new perspective on the life now over.

Ultimately this didn’t quite work for me as much as I was hoping for despite a very strong start with a post covid-lens scenes of overworked NHS staff, strange news stories and talk of lockdowns which always will now elicit a powerful reader response and while it’s a different epidemic the scenes do have an emotional response hard to ignore. Then with Neffy asleep while the world ends, we are in the quite familiar territory of Wyndham and even 24 Days Later. Fuller captures a feeling of dislocation and people on the edge of freaking out well. One big theme is Neffy sees a relation between her and her remaining guinea pigs and the animals she saw in science labs as part of a life. Now the experiments need to decide if they should stay or escape.

For me though the story lacks drive after this point. There are lots of tender scenes, character moments via an SF memory device Neffy revisiting past points of her life but it all feels very mannered and emotionally distanced – it also slightly overcooks the plotlines. There is a reason a lot of these tales quickly leave the lab and explore the wider world; and this is more comfortable exploring inner space - which can echo lockdown experiences but its for a novel length tale not quite enough to keep me engaged with the story.

The Memory of Animals is an interesting take on a well-worn idea of genre but doesn’t for me do enough against those stories to make it truly stand out which is disappointing as the experiences of recent years is yet to be fully explored. There is fine writing and some good character works but the essential story is a little overly familiar and so no surprises await seasoned genre fans.

I've enjoyed all of Claire's other books but I just couldn't not get on with The Memory of Animals. I didn't connect to the characters and I felt the plot, though interesting, was too slow. I couldn't read more than a handful of pages before getting distracted or losing focus. It just didn t hold me. I was actively skipping the octopus diary entries by the end as well. Sorry. Wanted to love it, but not for me this one.

Claire Fuller is one of my favourite authors - and The Memory of Animals. sees her continue her run of fantastic, moving, and ever so slightly unsettling reads. Highly recommend

A somewhat odd book and I'll try to review without giving spoilers. I enjoyed the first third or so; there was a real sense of doom and panic around the pandemic. Then there was a sudden shift with the introduction of a weird plot device that, had it been done properly, could have taken the book into sci-fi / dystopian territory but it just seemed clumsy.

I found the flashback parts really fascinating to see how Neffy had ended up in the vaccine trial but, ultimately, I didn't like the ending and was left feeling somewhat disappointed by the book.

2.5 stars rounded up to 3

Steeped in saltwater, The Memory of Animals marks a new high for Clair Fuller, who artfully weaves together an unsettling and many-layered narrative, plucking at the ideas of grief and loss, memory and reality. Undoubtedly one of the best books of 2023, a darkly brilliant look at human experience in the face of disaster.

I was looking forward immenely to a new novel by Claire Fuller. Reading the blurb made it hard to actually pin down what t expect, I assume I just thought it was about octopuses. When reading at first I found some fault with this novel, but that might be my own fault. I found no connection between the different parts, plots, themes and motives in this novel. It felt like all would be relevant, the pandemic, the post-apocalyptic world, the memory device, the childhood memories, the octopuses, the relationships etc. but somehow they didn't go together in the way I expected them to. I did enjoy the writing, which was no surprise. And despite the fractured nature of the narrative, I found it easy to get to know the characters, the novel felt rather familiar in an unfamiliar way.
Nevertheless most of the individual parts did stay with me and left me with a lasting impression, as is typical for Claire Fuller's novels. And now that it's been a while, in hindsight the novel comes together more and more as a whole. So I'd definitely recommend this one! Especially if you're willing to into it with no set expectations about what genre or topics or plot to expect. Looking forward to whatever Claire Fuller will do next!

Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for providing an advanced reading copy!

Claire Fuller is one of my favourite writers. I admire how her books are always very different but instantly recognisable as hers. The Memory of Animals was a tough read at times, particularly because of the scenes around the pandemic - she communicated the fear and terror we all felt in 2020 so well. It is compelling and horrific but also beautiful. A great read.

I would never sign up to read a dystopian novel but Claire Fuller has written such an engaging book that she hooked me in & I raced through it. Strongly recommend, it’s well structured with good characterisation.