The Book of M: A Novel
Brad Thor's Summer 2018 Fiction Pick for THE TODAY SHOW!
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY Elle • Refinery29 • PopSugar • Verge
Author of LA Times Prize finalist The Cartographers
“The Book of M is devastating and inventive as Shepherd examines the value of memory, packing in imaginative twists as she goes.” —USA Today
"Eerie, dark, and compelling, [The Book of M] will not disappoint lovers of The Passage and Station Eleven." —Booklist
WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE UP TO REMEMBER?
Set in a dangerous dystopian world, The Book of M tells the captivating story of a group of ordinary people caught in an extraordinary catastrophe who risk everything to save the ones they love. It is a sweeping debut that illuminates the power that memories have not only on the heart, but on the world itself.
One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears—an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories.
Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day Max’s shadow disappears too.
Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the time he has left with the love of his life. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable world, braving the threat of roaming bandits, the call to a new war being waged on the ruins of the capital, and the rise of a sinister cult that worships the shadowless.
As they journey, each searches for answers: for Ory, about love, about survival, about hope; and for Max, about a new force growing in the south that may hold the cure.
Like The Passage and Station Eleven, this haunting, thought-provoking, and beautiful novel explores fundamental questions of memory, connection, and what it means to be human in a world turned upside down.
Don't miss the latest captivating novel by Peng Shepherd:
The Cartographers
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Community Reviews
The Book of M by Peng Shepherd
485 page
What’s it about?
This dystopian novel concentrates on the power of memories. One day in India a man suddenly loses his shadow. Their is no scientific explanation. Over time he also loses his memories. He is the first, but the phenomenon quickly spreads around the world. The book opens two years later as Ory and Max are hiding out from the chaos in a former resort in Virginia. One day Max wakes up without her shadow. The story goes from there…
What did it make me think about?
This book concentrates heavily on how much our memories make us who we are. I could not help but think of all those that are aging and losing their memories.
Should I read it?
The first half of this book is definitely stronger than the second half of the book. I like a good dystopian novel every now and then and had high hopes for this one. However, I just didn’t care enough about these people to make it 485 pages! If the plot drives your book- it better be riveting. This was not always riveting. Having said that- this book has gotten lots of great reviews so maybe it is just me.
Quote-
"I understood then how the Forgetting works. Why sometimes we shadowless simply don't remember anymore and why other times something changes: there's a difference between when the mind forgets and when the heart does."
If you like this try-
On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee
The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
The Power by Naomi Alderman
Then what happened? I’m really not sure at what point this book became boring and seemed to plod along. All of a sudden, it was taking me forever to just get through a chapter because I would lose interest and stop reading.
The new characters introduced were not fleshed out enough. The travel scenes became repetitive. The battles scenes were blah. All of a sudden, I realized I went from loving a book to just wanting it to end. If it hadn’t been for that great first half, I might have quit.
I was skimming through most pages and just wanting to get to the end.
And the end...awful, disappointing, unrewarding...and unrealistic of the characters.
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