What does it all mean?
I’ve been reflecting on the overall meaning of Ogawa’s 密やかな結晶 since finishing the novel.
Is it about authoritarian oppression? Is it about memory, meaning and identity? Is it about illness and decline (most obviously, the process of disappearance of the self that occurs in dementia)?
A little while ago, I found a brilliant New Yorker article that reflects on The Memory Police, but also on other science fiction/magic realist novels that deliberately add elements of the fantastic to quasi realistic descriptions of an alternative present (or past or future) as a way to shine an interesting, new light on phenomena in our own world.
The article (linked below) refers to the Colson Whitehead’s fascinating novel ‘The Underground Railway’ (which I have read and enjoyed), and Mohsin Hamid’s ‘Exit West’ (which I’ll have to put on my TBR pile). I also thought about China Mieville’s brilliant “The City and the city”, which also plays with an interesting alternative version of a divided city and authoritarian worlds.
How “The Memory Police” Makes You See | The New Yorker
To answer my own question, I don’t think that 密やかな結晶 is necessarily about any one thing. It is definitely Ogawa’s style to play with a set of parallel resonances without telling the reader what to think or how to interpret her fictional world.
For myself, I am most struck with the connection to dementia. In the final chapters, R’s gentle caring for the narrator as she faces physical disintegration and mental disappearance, brought up for me lots of connections with caregivers (husband’s, wives, children) who see their loved one gradually and inexorably disappearing. I reflected once again on how both carers and the individual might struggle to resist that implacable process - to hold on to memories as a way to hold on to the individual person. But in the end, only memories in the caregiver, in other family members, remain.
But I don’t think that is the only way to read the story. Hopefully others here will have enjoyed our journey (notwithstanding its quiet and desolate ending).
We have reached the end of 密やかな結晶.
Hopefully some of you will join me for more 小川洋子 with her short story collection 寡黙な死骸みだらな弔い
We will potentially kick off next week with the first story…
