Memory Piece is the story of three Asian American women, Giselle, Jackie and Ellen, whose lives collide in a small moment of rebellion when they are teenage girls searching for more from life, and they continue to go in and out of each other’s lives, in person and digitally, for over half a century. From 1980s New Jersey, to a dystopian vision of future New York, their stories are explored through the worlds of art, technology, and community activism, with their dynamic of friendship, admiration, envy, insecurities, desire and need drawing the story of these three very different women together. Giselle, from a young age, captures and seeks to understand life through art, eventually progressing to performance pieces that she becomes acclaimed for. Jackie is deep in the world of technology. Ellen is a passionate community activist kick-starting communal projects from abandoned buildings. As each achieves their own successes, they also become disillusioned with the reality of their worlds. With a main section dedicated to each character, the book is a meditation on many things, including these women trying to find their meaningful place in an increasingly hostile world.

The writing style is at once direct and eloquent. There is a bleakness to the story, a sense of unease running throughout, and yet there are beautiful moments of connection, of understanding, dry humour, victories and love that bring hope to the story; a sense that as the world around us becomes more unsettled, and increasingly enslaved by technology and greed, it’s the moments of friendship and true comnection that may sustain us. The importance, and recording, of memory, both individual and collective, emerges as a key theme to this novel, along with the dynamics in friendships and relationships that can be at once solid and fragile, art and life as experienced through art, the power and peril of technology, identity and culture, and family duties and expectations. The more I think about it, the more I like this book. Multi-layered and thought-provoking, I’m looking forward to seeing the discussion around this one.

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Memory Piece is published by Dialogue Books on March 21st. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my eARC.

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Lisa Ko is the author of the novels Memory Piece and The Leavers, which was a national bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and winner of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. Ko’s writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories and The Believer. She lives in New York City.