Escape from Memory

October 13, 2003
When 15-year-old Kira's friends hypnotize her, she remembers a "Mama" who is not the woman she knows as her mother speaking a language that's not English. Her mother, Sophia, won't answer her questions, and shortly afterward, a stranger calling herself Aunt Memory appears, telling Kira that Sophia has been kidnapped and that Kira must go to Crythe, her true homeland, to save her. This is the promising start to Haddix's (Turnabout
) science fiction novel; unfortunately, her premise gets muddled amid confusing details. Once in Crythe, the alleged Aunt Memory tells Kira about native culture and history; after the Chernobyl meltdown, she says, the village was relocated to California (Kira, raised in Ohio, had believed she was born in California). War broke out, and Kira's birth parents were executed. Haddix steadily infuses creative ideas: Crythe is a memory-obsessed culture where children learn from an honorary "Aunt Memory" to record every detail. Kira's birth parents, both geniuses, had built "a system to replicate memory on a computer. But it was human memory they could copy, not digital." Kira, apparently, has her parents' memories embedded within her, and these now put her in danger. Fans of the author's Shadow Children series can count on an abundance of twists and cliffhangers, but ultimately readers may be frustrated by the plot's vagueness, especially around the state of current Crythe. Additionally, the book's villain is too much of a caricature to be truly scary. Ages 12-up.

March 1, 2004
Gr 6-8-At a sleepover, Kira, 15, agrees to let her friends hypnotize her for the fun of it. Instead of the expected revelation of a secret crush, her friends hear a child's buried memory of fleeing from danger with her mother and speaking in a language none of them understands. Kira's assumptions about her life in their small Ohio town are challenged, and her reticent, eccentric mother is frightened rather than reassuring when confronted with her daughter's questions. Then she disappears, and a woman shows up claiming to be Kira's benevolent Aunt Memory from a community called Crythe, where memories are valued above all else. Aunt Memory claims that the woman Kira thinks of as her mother is being held hostage and that only Kira can save her. Thus ensues a race across the continent involving Crythian political intrigue, deception, kidnapping, and blackmail. Of course, nothing is as it seems, and there are enough plot twists to satisfy Haddix's loyal readers. The plot-driven narrative moves at such a brisk pace that only by the end of the story do readers have time to ponder the unresolved questions concerning the power and role of memory in our lives.-Farida S. Dowler, formerly at Bellevue Regional Library, WA

Copyright 2004 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2003
Gr. 6-9. While under hypnosis at a sleepover, Kira remembers a strange tidbit from her past--her eccentric mother has been lying about how she and Kira ended up in small-town Ohio. It turns out that Kira comes from Crythe, a community that, legend has it, descended from the Ancient Romans. The Crythains believe that people are what they remember, so they forget nothing--remembering every word, thought, and action they've ever experienced. Having escaped the strange world of Crythe as a toddler, Kira returns, hoping to discover her past and perhaps save her people. But soon she finds herself imprisoned with her best friend and the woman she always believed was her mother; if Kira has any chance of escaping, she'll have to unlock the memories hidden inside her. Tightly plotted and " Matrix"-esque in its thought-provoking complexity, this will have special appeal for the computer cognoscenti. Haddix nimbly balances a fascinating examination of the significance of memory with an exciting, fantastical adventure story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)