Memory Piece
Barack Obama's Reading List 2024
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF 2024 | A VOGUE BEST BOOK OF 2024 | ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE READS OF SUMMER 2024
'There's no doubting Ko's talent' Daily Mail
'Ambitious . . . [Ko] is unafraid to wrangle big ideas' Observer
'One of those rare, sumptuous tales' Elle
As teenagers, Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong and Ellen Ng are drawn together by their sense of alienation. 'Allied in the weirdest parts of themselves,' they embark on a future defined by freedom and creativity.
By the time they are adults, their dreams are murkier. As Giselle navigates an unfamiliar elite social world, Jackie contends with the internet's sinister shift towards surveillance and Ellen confronts the gentrification and policing overwhelming her New York City neighbourhood, they must reckon with a world radically different from the one they dreamed of.
From the pre-digital 1980s to the visionary subcultures of the 1990s to a strikingly imagined portrait of the 2040s, Memory Piece is an innovative and audacious story of friendship, art and ambition that asks: what is the value of a meaningful life?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ko (The Leavers) spans past, present, and future with the astute story of three Chinese American women from the New York City tristate area over the course of their lives. As a teen in 1980s suburbia, Giselle Chin knows she wants to be an artist, and that her performance art will provide "a container for the uncertainty and overwhelm of the future." At Chinese language school, she meets Jackie Ong, who's drawn to computers and feels "more kinship to machines" than people. At a party, the two encounter Ellen Ng, who later gets involved in political activism and moves to a community squat in New York City called Sola. As Giselle gains fame in the art world, she wonders whether celebrity will compromise her true vision, and if so, which one she'll have to abandon. Jackie, too, must decide what really matters to her as she attempts to balance integrity and success while creating an online social network just as the internet begins to take off, and Ellen worries Sola will be undone by gentrification. For much of the narrative, the women's individual story lines feel a bit disjointed, but Ko brings them together in a satisfying final act in the 2040s, when America is an authoritarian police state. This is a worthy follow-up to Ko's striking debut.
