Recursion

by Blake Crouch
326 pgs

For the past couple of years, anytime anyone asked me for a book recommendation, the first book I've thought about has been Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch. It's the first and only book by him I've read, and I loved it. It's a mind-bending science fiction book that's hard to describe, and to even try to, runs the risk of spoiling the experience for whomever I recommend it to. So, I simply tell them to read it. Recursion is just as mind-bending, just as enjoyable, and I'll be recommending it just as often.

Like its predecessor, Recursion is a difficult book to describe, so I won't say much. But at its core, it's about memory, and the role memory plays in time. The book begins in 2018 with a NYPD detective responding to a suicide call. The "jumper" is a woman who tells him she suffers from False Memory Syndrome--a new condition that has recently begun to afflict people, suddenly giving them a new set of memories of a life they never lived.

The book then jumps back to 2007, to a scientist named Helena Smith, who is approached by one of the wealthiest men in the world, who offers her his unlimited resources to fund her research in to memory and curing Alzheimer's. As the book continues to jump back and forth between the events of 2007 and 2018, Crouch slowly unfolds the scope and magnitude of the story he's written...and it's impressive.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Dark Matter

by Blake Crouch
342 pgs

Most of the time, the book I'm reading doesn't occupy my thoughts except for when I'm actively reading it. Usually, when I close it and put it down, I go along with my life and don't think about it again until the next time I sit down and start reading again. Dark Matter was an exception. I'd close the book and go about whatever I had to do, but the story wouldn't leave my mind for quite some time.

Jason Dessen has a good life. He's married to a beautiful woman, has a great son, and a stable career as a physics professor at a small college in Chicago. Although, every once in a while, he wonders what his life would have been like if he hadn't made the decision so many years ago, to marry and leave the demanding and exciting world of scientific research behind.

One evening, having been sent out to buy ice cream, Jason is abducted by a man wearing a mask. The man asks him some enigmatic questions about whether he's happy with his life and drugs him. When he wakes up, he's greeted by a group of men he doesn't know, but who treat him as if they've known him for years and who welcome him back like he's been gone for a long time. He quickly learns that the life he woke up to is not the life he was living before the man abducted him. His wife, Daniela, is not his wife, they never got married and had a son together, an he's a highly-esteemed atomic physicist, who has accomplished his life's work and tapped into a part of the universe never before experienced.

Dark Matter is a fast-moving, mind-bending story that draws on many of the best concepts that make science fiction so entertaining and thought-provoking. My one criticism of Crouch--and it's a small one--is that I wish he had slowed down occasionally and more-fully explored some of the philosophical and metaphysical concepts he was using in his narrative. The book gives you a lot to think about, and many times as I was reading it, my mind would start to stray and think about the universe Crouch created, but I felt like I couldn't stop and think about it, or I'd get left behind by the story as it continued on without me.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★