Recursion (Blake Crouch): little substance, good fun

💭💭💭½
February 2021
Bookstagram: Eu, Coruja

He has wondered lately if that’s all living really is — one long goodbye to those we love.

Cat: Wednesday

Judging by this book, style isn’t one of Blake Crouch’s strenghts. Its reading itself is a flaccid experience, with little emotional investment. It saves a lot of prose, which reminds seminal authors of the American science fiction landscape, like Ray Bradbury; but lacking the subtlety of simplicity.

The premise is good enough: a scientist accidentally develops a technology that’s able to “map” one’s memories and sending their conscience back to an earlier moment in their lifetimes. The story develops well, inside its own constrictions; Barry and Helena are good protagonists, and Slade, well, let’s say he plays his part really well.

The problem is, given the complexity of the subject, it’s impossible not to think about the near infinite possibilities the book could explore, but doesn’t even consider.

[SPOILER]
Barry doesn’t think of Meghan, his dead daughter, at any point after he starts dating Helena. It feels like he forgot her existence, just as in his posterior lives (in which she in fact didn’t exist). Moments like this are what make the emotional experience inconsistent.

Helena says it’s not safe sending someone’s conscience to their childhood, for the adult’s brain is way more developed, and there’s no way they could know what kind of consequences that would bring upon the subject. Nevertheless, without any research on the matter, Helena does it to herself multiple times, with no consequences whatsoever.
[/SPOILER]

The author had already become a best seller with his previous works: Dark Matter, and the Wayward Pines trilogy, later adapted to television by Fox Channel.

Possibilities without end go unexplored. This title could easily span the greatest multitude of themes. If the author would go into them, though, I believe it wouldn’t be the book he wanted to write. It is what it is: a simpes novel, but not a bad one at all.

The good thing about it is that the book is concise, and, in its strange narrative structure, seems to leap through a series of climaxes before hitting the ultimate end. A light, quick read that entertains — which is its main purpose (there are no big ideas here).

The numerous references and bad exposition dialogues don’t contibute to elevate the experience at all (“I see you also read John Locke”, or “Fawkes Station, inspired by Guy Fawkes”; I mean, could it be a little bit less obvious?). And, with scientists explaining one another the basics of physics, it feels like the literary equivalent of a Nolan flick.

The ending line, though, is awesome. 👌

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