The Definitions
A Novel
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
An elegant, haunting dystopian novel about individuals relearning how to navigate the world after a mysterious illness strips them of their memories
Nestled in an idyllic locale beside the sea, the Center is a place of rehabilitation for those afflicted by a strange illness that has swept through the population, erasing their memories and any sense of identity. Students arrive at the Center nameless—none of them know who they are or how they got there.
Each day, they attend classes that will help them relearn the right ways to speak and live; they practice the roles they hope to assume once they graduate and return to society. In their free time, they negotiate a burgeoning social hierarchy and watch old videos together, stories of characters whose names they adopt: Maria, Chino, Ross, Chandler, Gunther . . . But as flashes of memories—of pets, lovers, errands, and beloved music—emerge, some students start to question the Center’s strict instruction and begin to explore different ways in which they might define themselves.
A stunning, intimately told story about what makes us who we are, The Definitions examines the limits of language, the power of connection, and how the human spirit can flourish even under the most oppressive conditions.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Greene (Ostrich) delivers a weighty metaphysical and metafictional novel about a near future in which a virus wipes out people's memories. The unnamed narrator lives in a rehabilitation center where those who were infected are educated in art, ethics, math, and 21st-century history, with the promise that once they've learned enough, they'll be released. The narrator is writing down their memories in hopes of holding on to them and pondering how one's identity is shaped by language and narrative ("It was impossible to capture an essence in a word," they think, concluding that "words, regardless of their inexactness... had the power to knit people together into novel arrangements"). Their interactions with fellow patients often combine the banal and grotesque: the narrator is asked at one point to bite a wart off another patient's toe because she is unable to reach it ("I was disgusted, and, at the same time, I was strangely drawn to it"). Elsewhere, the narrator muses on lessons from the center's English teacher ("for a story to be a story, it had always to be escalating. Otherwise, it was just a description"). The dystopian premise feels a bit thin, but the narrator's playful riffs on the nature of fiction gradually reveal what Greene is up to. Readers will find much to ponder.
