Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Mem
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.bethanycmorrow.com/
CITY:
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:University of California Santa Cruz, B.A.; graduate work at the University of Wales (Bangor, Gwynedd, Wales).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer.
WRITINGS
Also author of a blog.
SIDELIGHTS
Bethany C. Morrow is a writer and novelist based in northern New York. She holds a B.A. in sociology from the University of California Santa Cruz. She also attended the University of Wales (Bangor, Gwynedd, Wales), where she studied clinical psychology research. She is a writer of speculative literary fiction that uses “character and language to engage with, comment on and investigate worlds not unlike our own,” commented a writer on the Bethany C. Morrow website.
Morrow’s debut novel, Mem, is a “haunting exploration of memory, identity, and mortality,” stated a Kirkus Reviews writer. The setting of the book is Montreal, Canada, in an alternate reality of the year 1925. Scientists have discovered a way to extract memories from willing participants and place them in humanlike physical constructs called mems. The mems then replay the memory over and over again until they reach the end of their useful life or are “reprinted,” essentially deleted when the original host reaches a maximum number of allowable mems. The technique is a boon for treatment of traumatic events and other mental illness since the troublesome memories can be taken out and released in the form of a mem. Others who have pleasant memories they want to preserve can have them installed in a mem for them to experience again whenever they like.
The protagonist of this novel is a nineteen-year-old mem who calls herself Elsie, though she is more accurately Dolores Extract No. 1, named after the human source of the memory she contains. In this case, Elsie houses the painful memory of an automobile accident Dolores experienced several years earlier. Elsie, however, is a unique case: she is a mem, for certain, but she has also been allowed to attain independence and live independently outside the Vault, where the rest of the mems are kept. She does not know why or how she became an independent entity, but she struggles to find a place for herself in the outside world while also existing as another person’s memory.
When Elsie receives a summons to return to the Vault, she knows that her existence must be in danger. The Dolores host has reached her maximum number of mems, and Elsie may be reprinted to allow more memories to be hosted. In the process of confronting this threat to her existence, Elsie begins to evolve into a new and different type of being. She receives protection from a kind-hearted professor and his wife. She discovers what happens to broken mems and to sources with severe psychological damage. She also experiences the beginnings of the most powerful force of all—love—with a scientist. In the end, a conflict with the original Dolores will determine Elsie’s fate.
The Kirkus Reviews contributor commented favorably on Morrow’s “dizzying concept, richly imagined narrator, ornate setting, and first-rate storytelling.” In Publishers Weekly, a reviewer remarked, “Morrow’s debut is ambitious and insightful, raising questions about memory, trauma, and humanity.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2018, review of Mem.
Publishers Weekly, December 4, 2017, review of Mem, p. 39.
ONLINE
Bethany C. Morrow website, http://www.bethanycmorrow.com (August 9, 2018).
Bio
Bethany is a recovering expat recently returning from six years in Montreal, Quebec, to live and write in northcountry New York - yet another foreign place. A California native, Bethany graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a BA in Sociology (but took notable detours in the Film and Theatre departments). Following undergrad, she studied Clinical Psychological Research at the University of Wales, Bangor, in Great Britain before returning to North America to focus on her literary work.
Though sociology and forensic psychology will always be among her passions, writing has been a lifelong endeavor. Whether in novels for the YA or adult market, novellas, short stories, stage plays, television pilots or short film scripts, Bethany's speculative literary fiction uses a focus on character and language to engage with, comment on and investigate worlds not unlike our own.
Literary rep: Victoria Marini, Irene Goodman Literary Agency
Visit Bethany's blog!
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Print Marked Items
Morrow, Bethany C.: MEM
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 15, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Morrow, Bethany C. MEM Unnamed Press (Adult Fiction) $25.00 5, 22 ISBN: 978-1-944700-55-3
A young woman's personality is the result of a startling experimental procedure, leaving her to struggle with
the question of who she really is.
This debut novel by multigenre fabulist Morrow is a haunting exploration of memory, identity, and
mortality set in a vaguely sinister alternate-reality Montreal circa 1925. In this rendering, scientists have
discovered a peculiar method of extracting memories from people and delivering them into "Mems," halfalive
creatures whose purpose is to experience the memory over and over again in a fortress called the Vault
until they die. But not our narrator, oddly enough. The story is told by a 19-year-old Mem who identifies as
"Elsie," though her true designation is "Dolores Extract No. 1," meant to keep the memory of a car crash in
1906 from troubling her "source," Dolores Shepherd. But Elsie is a fully formed individual, capable of
forming her own memories, the only Mem who's been allowed to live independently outside the Vault.
Repeatedly she tells us, "I am a memory. Now I suppose I'll live like one," as she struggles with her place in
this strange world. Called back to the Vault, Elsie learns that because Dolores has reached her maximum
number of Mems, she is in danger of being "reprinted," wiping out her unique self. Protected by a kindly
professor and his wife, Elsie encounters broken Mems, fractured Sources, and a smitten scientist during her
evolution into a new kind of being. In studying memory, Elsie becomes even more aware of the damage
resulting from this cruel practice. "What kind of people are we if we can't traverse the landscape of our own
memories?" she asks. "What kind of people do they become who refuse?" These philosophical explorations
ultimately culminate in a disturbing clash between Elsie and Dolores prime. With her dizzying concept,
richly imagined narrator, ornate setting, and first-rate storytelling, Morrow offers an epiphany for readers of
speculative fiction with echoes of ideas explored in films like Blade Runner and Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind.
The defiant story of an impossible enigma who only yearns to be a real girl.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Morrow, Bethany C.: MEM." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530650834/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d07c0541.
Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530650834
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Mem
Publishers Weekly.
264.49-50 (Dec. 4, 2017): p39.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Mem
Bethany C. Morrow. Unnamed (PGW, dist.), $25 (192p) ISBN 978-1-944700-55-3
In Morrow's haunting debut novel, the year is 1925, and Dolores Extract No. 1 has been recalled to the
Vault. Dolores Extract No. 1--or Elsie, self-named after a film character--is a Mem, physical beings that are
part of a groundbreaking procedure developed to extract memories from humans. Mems store the traumatic
or cherished memories that humans would like either to get rid of or preserve. Incapable of autonomous
thought, Mems regurgitate an infinite loop of whatever memory they have absorbed until expiration,
sometimes with horrifying results--except, somehow, Elsie, who has lived independently for 18 years. She
is all too capable of understanding what her recall implies and what her continued lucid and corporeal
existence must mean for her "Source," the original Dolores. There is a flat romantic subplot involving
scientist Harvey Parrish, and the revelation of Elsie's existence might have been better left to the
imagination. But Morrow's debut is ambitious and insightful, raising questions about memory, trauma, and
humanity. The novel is at its best when it presents Elsie at her most human, forcing the real ones around her
to reckon with what her personhood means for theirs. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Mem." Publishers Weekly, 4 Dec. 2017, p. 39. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A518029468/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=57906e12.
Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A518029468