Memory Wall, by Anthony Doerr

These wonderfully realized short stories have an interconnected theme of memory. The title story, which might be more accurately be called a novella, is set in a near future world where dementia patients can have their memories harvested and taped, to be played back directly into their brains…and these taped memories can be accessed by others as well. One such person is an elderly white woman tended lovingly by day by her black servant. At night she is visited by other blacks who want to find and steal the tape of her memory that holds the location of an important fossil discovered by her husband, who died before it could be removed from its remote location. Fossils are yet another form of “memory.” Set in South Africa, the remnants of apartheid echo as well. The final story also involves an elderly and dying woman, the sole survivor of the Holocaust from a group of girls in an orphanage. An epileptic, visions from this past resurface as she slowly declines and dies. Another outstanding story involves the flooding of the villages in China that disappeared when the Three Gorges Dam was built. Thoughtful and exceedingly well written – odd that only our library so far in our consortium has chosen to add this book to its collection. 256 pp.