Another day, another pandemic novel. This one is worth facing that lingering Covid trauma. A new virus "dropsy" has emerged in South America and is quickly sweeping the world with increasingly contagious and deadly variants. Neffi has just signed up for a paid clinical trial with Vaccine Biopharm. She has money trouble and a debt to pay and it all involved an octopus. When Neffi wakes after being given the vaccine and the virus, the clinic is mostly empty, just a few of the trial volunteers remain but none of them were given the vaccine before the medics fled. They're a varied bunch and Neffi is uncertain of their motivations and agendas. Terrified to leave the clinic and risk catching the variant that has decimated humanity they eke out a survival on the dwindling food stores. Meanwhile Neffi learns that one of her companions has invented a machine that allows the user to re-enter their own memories and experience them again, an addictive way to escape the current horror and confront the past. All the while Neffi writes to H of her love of octopuses and the events that led her to the clinic and the trial.

Claire Fuller has created a really compelling story here. She knows exactly when to give information and when to withhold it. The characters spend most of the novel trapped inside the clinic but Neffi's early insight into what is happening outside throught news belletins and the unsettling things she can see through her window create an excellent atmosphere. The fact that she misses the worst of the calamity and must piece together exactly what has happened is very effective. The way that her present links into her past through her revisiting of memories could have been an over-stretch but it creates a brilliant dual narrative about duty, responsibilty and family and the difficult nature of scientific experimentation. I am a huge fan of octopuses, so Neffi's fixation on them was an element I enjoyed. The three parallel narratives, the present pandemic, Neffi's memories and her letters to H weave together into an original and fascinating narrative that is a welcome addition to a burgeoning genre.

‘The Memory of Animals’ is a powerful, enthralling read that weaves together three narrative strands to create an impressive whole. Much like the octopuses that Neffy cared for in aquariums, the main characters are effectively imprisoned in a medical research unit after a savage pandemic has wiped out most of the population. The sense of captivity is emphasised by the contrasts between the sensory deprivation of Neffy’s post apocalyptic existence cowering indoors and the rich experiences from her past that she is able to live again through the Revisit apparatus that is the brainchild of Leon, a fellow survivor. I loved the sensory overload of the revisited scenes from Neffy’s past and there’s an incredible emphasis on tastes and smells throughout the novel. I also learnt a lot about octopuses. In a week when I have read articles about scientific research into man’s ability to communicate non-verbally with dogs, pigs and monkeys, Neffy’s interaction with octopuses was equally intriguing and credible.
Thanks to Net Galley for the privilege of getting to read this captivating novel in advance of its publication.

What a gorgeous book. Highly recommend!

FAVORITE QUOTES:
1. “Time has folded in on itself, corners and triangles overlapping and forming dark pockets, and now that I am trying to uncrease it, it is flattening into a different shape.”

2. “..the octopus’s body elongating to the width of the pipe in the way that humans and their possessions will expand or contract to the size of the space we’re given.”

TRIGGER WARNING: This is literally about the pandemic, but with different symptoms. I’ve tried to read a few fictionalized pandemic books, but could never finish them since I was traumatized by actually living through it 😅 THIS one though is good though.

I love Claire Fuller but I am not so sure about this one. I could get on board with the pandemic setting, even if I'm not usually keen on pandemic stories nowadays... But fine... But octopus and time travel, and flashbacks and an apocalyptic setting all together felt too much. I also feel that the characters, despite there being few of them, all felt similar and not very deep. I've no idea what's the difference between Piper and Rachel (is it even Rachel?) or why Leon is Leon and why he invented a memory machine. Unsettled Ground was such a stunning book because the characters felt real and moving, and intimate; here I didn't really feel the connection, and I kept forgetting that the narrator, Neffie, was 27. I felt like I was reading the voice of a teenager.
All in all I wouldn't call this terrible but it was not memorable, not particularly thrilling and a bit confused.

This is a very different kind of lockdown novel. I imagine the covid pandemic inspired this fictional dystopian rampant epidemic where the population is dying on the streets, at their desks, at home and everywhere else with swollen faces and a host of fatal symptoms. The sickness is so endemic that motorways are filled with metal coffins until ordered society fails and bodies remain where they "fell".

In parallel a bizarre group of maladjusted young people are, for a lot of money, taking part in a vaccine trial. Their characters are exposed much in the style of lab rats as they seek to survive, isolated in the medical facility.

The story thread comes from our narrator, Neffy, a pseudo-marine biologist. She is in the vaccine trial and fills in her background by writing to her beloved octopus. As if this wasn't offbeat enough, there is also a bizarre device for "Revisiting" your past in the trial unit, which serves to fill the gaps. Too many strands for my taste.

This is a very brutal imagining of self-preservation whilst drilling down into the past looking for how we reached this point. Whilst I found it innovative and, given our recent experiences of a pandemic, compelling, I ended up feeling this was an example of reductio ad absurdum.

Thanks to NetGalley and to Penguin for permissions to read

It's clear that Caire Fuller can write brilliantly. I really enjoyed reading the early part of the book and its initial plotline but found that as Fuller introduced more sub plots that the main plot lost credibility and cohesion. In the end there were two time jumps and a major decision and event that I just felt the main character wouldn't have made in a million years. The ending was sudden as if the author felt the book was getting a bit long and needed to be wrapped up quickly and so I felt a bit cheated.

The world is on the brink of a pandemic with a dropsy style virus causing people to develop dementia type forgetfullness, their eyes to bulge and then death has started circulating. Neffy, a 28 year old octopus obsessed marine biologist has signed up along with 9 other young people to be injected with the virus and then given a vaccine at a hermetically sealed lab. However, the virus sweeps through the world and the medics leave the building and the volunteers have to eek out their dwindling rations whilst deciding on what to do next. The volunteers day to day lives in this situation and how they interact would have been plenty to deal with in the novel but the author introdiuces letters from Neffy to a recipient just called "H" detailing her work in the past with octopuses and the guilt she feels for her part in research into their biology. One of the volunteers is a tech genius and has brought along the prototype of a device called a "revisitor" where the user may be lucky enough to visit an event in their past and see it as if they are actually there. The device works on Neffy and her past and reasons for volunteerimng are gradually revealed..These ideas would each alone make an interesting basis for a tale but all together made the narrative too crowded.

Claire Fuller is, of course, an excellent writer. You don't need me to tell you that. This novel seems to be a bit of a departure from her usual style - and I don't say that as a criticism. It's a 'pandemic' novel, about a pandemic, and a group of people who volunteer for a vaccine trial, only to be stranded, left alone when the rest of humanity gets the virus. I think, had we not been through an actual pandemic, most of us would have read this with a wry smile, thinking: really? But this novel definitely proves that truth is stranger than (or equally as strange as) fiction. As others have noted, there are several strands to this storyline, but essentially, this is a novel about humanity, about evolution, about human survival. It doesn't give any answers (thankfully), because that's the gift: it makes you, the reader, really think about perhaps what the pandemic did to your own memories. This is clever fiction - intelligent stuff. Highly recommended. My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I enjoyed this book but was left with the feeling that it felt very much like it was more than a single book . the author starts with a pandemic story and you think you are going to read a disaster novel however pretty soon in you are introduced to a sci fi element where the narrator is able to revisit parts of her personal history using a machine that one of the people locked in the research centra after a vaccine trial goes wrong seems to have been allowed to bring in with him
The flash back sequences using the machine were for me the best elements in the story , the family story of the girl and the way that she ends up letting an octopus loose from the aquarium where she was working was the part I most enjoyed about the book and I would have read this as a novel on its own .The family relationships and their difficulties were dealt with skilfully and felt very real
The post disaster post pandemic world that I wanted to know more about was only touched on , I was left feeling that I the book really wasn't what I was expecting at all .
The author as a clear easy to read prose style
I read an early copy on Netgalley uk this review is published on there and on my book blog Bionic Sarahs books on Wordpress . The book is published in April 2023 by Penguin Uk Viking Books

This book was a bit of en enigma for this reviewer - a pandemic novel centring on a vaccine trial and the relationships that develop between the participants when the population is wiped out by a new disease, leaving them marooned in the vaccine research facility. Alongside it runs the story of Neffy, one of the volunteers in the vaccine trial, and a marine biologist with an obsession with octopuses, and one octopus in particular, who Neffy writes letters to throughout the book. Sounds a bit bonkers? Well, it often works well, but there is something of a disconnect between the two stories at times, leaving the book as a whole feeling less than satisfyingly complete. There are certainly passages of wonderful writing, some excellent characterisation, an understanding of traumatic relationships, and an imaginative description of a dystopian world.

The lockdown during the pandemic of 2020/21 produced a good deal of writing from people forced to be alone in a room. Celebrity and established authors produced memoirs, novels, children’s books. The L word might be a turn-off for many people – after all, why write about something we all experienced and are happy to put behind us? However, Clare Fuller has written a lockdown novel which has massive ambition: part thriller/speculative fiction, part sci-fi and part creative non-fiction
The protagonist is a young woman called Neffie who has abandoned her studies in marine biology. She has taken a fill-in job at an aquarium where she acts as a facilitator between the exhibits and the visitors. To earn some extra money, she volunteers to take part in a vaccine trial. During her drugged-up time in isolation, a pandemic rages through the world and she wakes to a drastically changed life. Now she has to live and negotiate with a handful of her fellow volunteers and find a way forward through this crisis.
This is the principal strand of this ambitious novel. I found it to be gripping and a page-turner which had me hooked as I followed Neffie’s life within the bubble of the vaccine volunteers.
However, the author’s ambition has built in two other strands. One of Neffie’s team-mates has brought along a contraption known as The Revisitor. This allows a person to relive in vivid fashion, memories from their childhood and adulthood. Neffie becomes addicted to this and we relive her memories as she meets again her father, Baba, and revisits her childhood in Greece. This strand takes us into the realm of sci-fi.
There is a third strand which takes the form of letters from Neffie to ‘dearest H’. This is revealed to be an octopus in the aquarium where Neffie works. These letters reveal a great deal of fascinating and extraordinary details about the lives and abilities of octopi. But although this strand would be very powerful as a piece of creative non-fiction, I struggled to see the relevance to the principal strand of Neffie and her predicament in the vaccine isolation ward. Was the intention to have the octopus as a symbol of incarceration/liberation? Unfortunately, although it was interesting, it became increasingly irrelevant and began to sap the narrative pace of the main strand.
So these three strands of speculative/thriller fiction, family history seen through a sci-fi device and creative non-fiction concerning octopi are an ambitious mix. But, at the two thirds point, the thrilling thrust of the first half began to slump and this novel became a dull plod through to the end – a great shame for a novel which began with such great pace and intrigue. Just one of these strands would make a great piece so I was bemused as to why all three were combined into a single volume. Unfortunately the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
Thanks go to NetGalley for making available a pre-release copy so that I might post an honest and unbiased review.

I was excited to receive an advance copy of Claire Fullers new novel, which is due out in April. Fuller won the Costa Novel award in 2021 for her previous novel 𝘜𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘎𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥, a book I loved so my expectations were high. ⁣
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This book sits firmly in the genre of dystopian pandemic fiction. Set in London, Neffy is part of a small group of volunteers taking part in a clinical vaccine trial. A fatal variant of a virus is spreading rapidly. Neffy is injected with the virus and is the only participant to have immunity. Meanwhile the hospital and city have been abandoned as the pandemic kills thousands. One of the other patients has a prototype of a memory machine which allows the user to “revisit” memories from their past. Neffy regularly revisits her earlier life where the reader learns more about her life and family. The book is also interspersed with letters from Neffy (who is an aquarist) to an octopus. Yes, stay with me!⁣
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This book just didn’t work for me. There were far too many strands which did not coalesce and the structure of the book suffered as a result. I found the octopus letters gimmicky and baffling. Why? The whole balance of the book was just “off”. The middle sections were pedestrian and lacked the suspense and tension you would expect from a dystopian book. I struggled to decipher the message of the book, amongst all that was going on. What can animals teach us? Analysing the dark side of humanity à la 𝘓𝘰𝘳𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘴? The power of memory? ⁣
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This book has been well received so far and I’m certainly an outlier with my review, so please read it and make up your own mind. While I did learn a lot about the lifecycle of the octopus, I just did not like this book enough. ⁣
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Many thanks to @netgalley and @vikingbooksuk for this advance copy.

Normally I'm a huge fan of Claire Fuller's work but this one just wasn't for me. The book itself is well-written, the characters believable, and the pandemic atmosphere perfectly captured, but the plot itself is a mash-up of dystopian virus, sci-fi time travel, murder mystery and an academic lecture on cephalopods.

I'm starting to think Claire Fuller’s Unsettled Ground was an unrepeatable event. I've tried two of her other novels now and I've dnfed both. In both dnfs, Fuller was writing protagonists much younger than herself, whereas I think Unsettled Ground benefitted from a character similar in age to Fuller herself as Jeanie came across as real, fully developed and authentic. The protagonists of the two dnfs by contrast didn't feel real or relatable in any way, which is weird especially in Memory of Animals as I am currently the exact same age as the protagonist. She didn't feel like she had any kind of unique voice or personality. It felt like an echo or draft of a covid-inspired idea Fuller had rather than a fully developed character based plot story. Disappointing, this was a highly anticipated read for me.

There were many things I liked about this book - the writing is great and the characterisation strong too. Neffy remembering time in Greece with her father is beautifully written but the Revisiter device too far fetched.
Overall, it is carried by the author’s writing (which I am a big fan of) rather than the plot, which for me managed to be both plodding and too fanciful at the same time.

Having finished this book I have left it a few days, hoping that my views would settle and crystallise. I am still slightly baffled - the plotline is serviceable; pandemic, vaccine trial, mystery over what is happening in the ward. Then there is the 'Revisiting', a sort of time travel, which as the patients are all cooped up watching the end of the world through their windows, one can forgive a few wandering minds to happier times. Then it gets really weird - letters to an octopus. It wasn't clear if these were letters that had been written before the pandemic, or whilst Neffy is in the ward, or why - did the octopus ever write back?!

Maybe the book is just too clever for me, maybe I am over pandemic literature, maybe I am sceptical about octopus penpals - I did finish it but am left with a sense of hmmm.

Beautifully written and incredibly thoughtful, The Memory of Animals questions the lengths humans will go to in times of crisis and uncertainty. The book reminds readers just how precious life is and how important our loved ones are. I have to admit that this book was completely different to what I was anticipating, but there is no doubt that this is a very special book.

The Memory of Animals is certainly both timely and topical - I read a chunk of this novel while I was home having tested positive for covid, which made for an interesting reading experience. I was especially moved by Neffy's experiences with revisiting - seeing how Neffy made sense of her past, viewing this from the vantage point knowing what is to come and what awaits her - reminded me that life can sometimes take unexpected turns, but our ability to find strength in such times is what makes us human.

There's also some very incredibly interesting discussions that emerge throughout the novel concerning how unnatural it is for animals of all kinds to be kept in captivity and the ethics that surround testing and scientific research.

Overall, The Memory of Animals is profound and contains many layers that will have you asking lots of big questions and leave you thinking long after you close the book and its final pages.

I am a huge fan of `Claire's - Bitter Orange is one of my favourite books of all time (I've read it multiple times) and absolutely adored Unsettled Ground but sadly, this one didn't hit the mark for me. Wasn't too keen about the pandemic setting and I found it hard to relate to the characters. I did want to keep reading though as it was very well written and I am loyal to Claire so I am rating it 4 stars.

Another pandemic novel. This time the disease causes memory loss and, usually, death. Neffy signs up for a vaccine trial. The first step is to be infected with the virus. She thinks the trial will take a few weeks, during which time she will be “imprisoned” in medical facility. Unfortunately the virus spreads quickly outside and the vaccine Guinea pigs are left to their own devices.

One of her fellow Guinea pigs has a device which enables some people to “revisit” their past. Neffy is one of those people. The “revisiting” parts of the book worked well for me and prevented the book from becoming too claustrophobic for me.

I wonder if the author has read “Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life”

Thanks to Netgallery and Penguin General for the ARC.

A novel of our time. Neffy, grieving for her father, volunteers to trial a vaccine during a devastating world pandemic. I loved the descriptions of the octopus and Neffys passion but the middle part set in the clinic dragged. The ending was satisfying and the characters well written. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the arc.

A pandemic novel for our times. A vaccine trial goes wrong and the patients end up in a Dystopian nightmare.
It’s a really interesting premise for a novel and it’s certainly very well-written and plotted.
There’s also a Lord of the Flies/ survival of the fittest vibe.
However I found the characters - young people who have survived - a bit interchangeable. This meant that I didn’t feel for them as much as I might have..
A theme throughout is the main character -Effy’s - love of octopuses. This is an interesting trope but I’m not sure it hugely adds to the novel.
All in all, an ambitious and original novel that nails the zeitgeist and is well executed.