Recursion: A Novel by Blake Crouch

Recursion by Blake Crouch – Did you know that everything is a memory? By the time your brain filters and processes everything you experience, as we learn early on in Recursion, the present is already gone. Even the words you’re reading now are in the past. This is the sort of mind-bending and disorienting concept upon which the best science fiction is built.

Recursion by Blake Crouch—the new book from the author of 2016 Book of the Year finalist, Dark Matter—begins with dual storylines that gradually converge. In one, we learn of the outbreak of a mysterious condition known as False Memory Syndrome, in which sufferers are haunted by past lives and loves that exist only in their memories.

In the other, a brilliant young scientist is making groundbreaking strides in the field of memory, unaware that the mysterious benefactor who funds her research may be guiding her toward a discovery so massive that soon she—and the rest of humanity—are drawn into a dangerous, world-shaking intrigue that turns reality into a treacherous labyrinth.

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One of my favorite aspects of this book is how it thrusts you into a world of the impossible while bringing you to a deeper understanding of the world around you. Crouch is a novelist in the spirit of M.C. Escher. He is a meticulous, mad architect of suspense and adventure. While reading Recursion, I was awed by the massive scope of his vision, made all the more satisfying by the human warmth that causes this world to feel lived-in and worth saving. This book is dizzying fun.