The Memory Artists

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta. He is co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities:
British Views of Canada, 1880–1914, author of The Salvation Army and
the Public, and editor of “Improved by Cult

For a novel that explores the labyrinth of the mind—the complex
subject of memory—saying that it is unforgettable or mind-boggling
might seem like poor punning. But those epithets are quite apt. Jeffery
Moore has presented us with a character, Noel Burun, who is a
hypermnesiac synesthete, seeing spoken language in vivid colour and
remembering everything he has heard, read, or seen. His mother suffers
from Alzheimer’s, for which he is seeking a cure. His close friends,
perhaps creations of his alter ego, all suffer from dysfunctional
memories, and all are all being treated by the renowned Dr. Vorta, whose
clinical notes and comments on the text are appended. It is so
ingeniously inventive that a great deal of the pleasure is not in
following the plot, but in figuring out the truth, comparing the variant
versions (the ghostwritten story, the personal diaries, the newspaper
clippings, the “notes”) and trying to separate fact from fiction.
One is caught up as well in a myriad of ideas—scientific, mnemonic,
spiritual—which dazzle and sometimes overwhelm. It is, as one reviewer
observed, a tale “too fantastic to be true, yet so convincingly told
that we can almost believe it.”

This is certainly one of the best novels of this year’s batch,
well-deserving of the several awards bestowed on its creator.