This review contains affiliate links, which earn me a small commission when you click and purchase, at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my small business and allowing me to continue providing you a reliable resource for clean book ratings.
In 2007, neuroscientist Helena Smith is working on a way to help store people’s memories and essentially give them back to them when they start losing them, such as in the case of Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia. She has powerful motivation to accomplish her goal: Her mother is in the early stages of the disease. She has made impressive progress but needs significant resources, more than just the grants she’s continuing to apply for in her lab work. When Helena is approached by a billionaire offering to fully fund the project to its conclusion, she ends up creating something that does far more than she intends.
In 2018, New York police detective Barry Sutton responds to a report of a woman threatening to jump from a tall building. He learns she is experiencing a new and strange phenomenon that has been termed False Memory Syndrome. She tells him that for the past month, she has been living with two sets of memories of the past decade. In what she thought was reality, she had been married and had a son; now, she is single and the man she thought she was married to doesn’t know her. But she was so sure her memories of that married life were real; now they’re just kind of black and white. She feels so confused and heartbroken that she ends up jumping to her death.
Barry is intrigued by FMS and the woman’s story, so he looks into some of the things she told him. What he pieces together gets him caught up in a complex and dangerous situation that is much bigger and more far-reaching than he could have imagined.
Recursion is a mind-bending novel that delves into the nature of time, memory, and reality. It’s philosophical; it’s brilliant science fiction; it’s a thriller. There are lots of pieces to this 3-D puzzle that come together in unexpected ways. I read it all in one evening; it was nearly impossible to put down. It’s complex and unexpected and one of those books to remember. I can’t say enough about how fascinating and mind-blowing and thought-provoking it is. Would be perfect if there weren’t strong language.
Rated: High, for 25 to 30 instances of strong language, and more uses of mild and moderate language. Sexual content is fairly limited; there are references to sex happening but no details. Violence happens at various spots throughout and is sometimes moderately detailed.
