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Apr. 3rd, 2023 11:25 pmMy friend has just put out her second YA novel, The Memory Eater, and the monster in it is SO GOOD -- many other things about it are extremely good too of course but one simply loves an furiously angry creature that calls her jailor by little pet names ...
The Memory Eater, of course, does what she says on the tin. Teen protagonist Alana's family has been tasked with using their vestiges of hereditary magic to keep her locked away under a Maine beach town for generations, and also keeping the economy of said beach town running by bringing patrons who have requested some carefully delineated forgetfulness down to the Memory Eater's cave for a visit. The arrangement makes everyone happy -- except for the Memory Eater, of course, but at least it keeps her fed so surely things aren't that bad?
It's supposed to be a family business -- supported and structured by the town council, which has a vested interest in keeping it running, for tourism reasons -- but now that Alana's responsible grandmother is dead and her resentful mother has left town for parts unknown, Alana is the only member of her family left to manage the Memory Eater and for the first time in her life she is struggling! The town council has decided she needs to be under constant supervision; she recently crashed down some stairs and has been having Some Problems; also, she's broken up with her girlfriend but doesn't fully remember doing it, which is a real warning sign when your job is managing a monster that eats memories.
The plot spirals rapidly out from there, generally several steps ahead of where I expected it to go, with tremendous repercussions for Alana, the Memory Eater, and the town that's built itself around both of them -- Alana is great as a protagonist and the Memory Eater obviously a show-stealer, but the other thing I especially love about this book is the way that it is a story about a community, for better and for worse, and Rebecca Mahoney is really good and depicting all the care and complications of that.
The Memory Eater, of course, does what she says on the tin. Teen protagonist Alana's family has been tasked with using their vestiges of hereditary magic to keep her locked away under a Maine beach town for generations, and also keeping the economy of said beach town running by bringing patrons who have requested some carefully delineated forgetfulness down to the Memory Eater's cave for a visit. The arrangement makes everyone happy -- except for the Memory Eater, of course, but at least it keeps her fed so surely things aren't that bad?
It's supposed to be a family business -- supported and structured by the town council, which has a vested interest in keeping it running, for tourism reasons -- but now that Alana's responsible grandmother is dead and her resentful mother has left town for parts unknown, Alana is the only member of her family left to manage the Memory Eater and for the first time in her life she is struggling! The town council has decided she needs to be under constant supervision; she recently crashed down some stairs and has been having Some Problems; also, she's broken up with her girlfriend but doesn't fully remember doing it, which is a real warning sign when your job is managing a monster that eats memories.
The plot spirals rapidly out from there, generally several steps ahead of where I expected it to go, with tremendous repercussions for Alana, the Memory Eater, and the town that's built itself around both of them -- Alana is great as a protagonist and the Memory Eater obviously a show-stealer, but the other thing I especially love about this book is the way that it is a story about a community, for better and for worse, and Rebecca Mahoney is really good and depicting all the care and complications of that.
